{"id":179902,"date":"2021-12-14T07:29:01","date_gmt":"2021-12-14T12:29:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/?p=179902"},"modified":"2023-06-27T12:39:14","modified_gmt":"2023-06-27T16:39:14","slug":"student-film-presents-story-of-nuremberg-through-uconn-archives","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/2021\/12\/student-film-presents-story-of-nuremberg-through-uconn-archives\/","title":{"rendered":"Student Film Presents Story of Nuremberg through UConn Archives"},"content":{"rendered":"

As a human rights major, UConn senior Joseph Vazquez \u201922 (CLAS) was familiar with the historic Nuremberg Trials<\/a> and knew about the late Connecticut Senator Thomas Dodd\u2019s role prosecuting Nazi war criminals<\/a> after World War Two.<\/p>\n

\u201cI knew about Nuremberg,\u201d he says, \u201cand I’ve worked with the Dodd Center, so I’ve learned about the history of Thomas Dodd. But mostly all on the surface level.\u201d<\/p>\n

That changed, though, when Vazquez enrolled in a human rights class that called for a deep dive into Dodd\u2019s very personal account of Nuremberg and a one-semester crash course on using historic archives to tell stories through film and digital media.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis class really put a first-hand perspective on it,\u201d says Vazquez, \u201cbecause I was looking at these images, these personal documents, these letters from Tom Dodd of his accounts while he was in Nuremberg, and it’s just really fascinating to see what’s going through somebody’s mind who’s in that situation. The horrors that are associated, the fears, the anxiety, in some cases the joy \u2013 the happiness that is felt knowing that this is important work \u2013 it allowed me to see Nuremberg from a deeper perspective, but also from a different perspective, an inside look.\u201d<\/p>\n

Vazquez and his classmates in the course Visual Storytelling through Human Rights Archives<\/em> spent a semester reading and categorizing Dodd\u2019s numerous letters \u2013 written to his wife, Grace, during the 18 months that he was away from his family during the trial \u2013 and sifting through other archival footage and documents related to the Holocaust and the Nuremberg Trials.<\/p>\n

The result of their efforts is a 13-minute film that takes the viewer on a journey through the events of the first tribunal through Dodd\u2019s words and experiences. The short film, entitled \u201cLetters from Nuremberg,\u201d<\/a> was first screened<\/a> as part of the Human Rights Institute\u2019s Human Rights Film+ Series<\/a> in October.<\/p>\n