Face to Face with History

On a day that brings news from our neighboring state of new public swastikas at the University of North Dakota, here's also news of real possibility, of teaching for peace, not hate.

Bernard Reuter, director of St. Cloud State University's Center for Holocaust and Genocide Education, is leading a tour of 200+ students from the St. Cloud area to Germany and France, where they will study directly the effects of the Nazi holocaust on the area of Alsace-Lorraine. They will also take part in performing a choral work (by Stephen Paulus and commissioned by Fr. Michael O'Connell when he was pastor at Minneapolis's Basilica of St. Mary), "To Be Certain of the Dawn."

One of the things that makes this trip so resonant, and so hopeful, is that St. Cloud State University is the institution most known in the news of the last few years for swastika graffiti and other evidence of anti-Semitic hate. I look forward to learning about the impact of this visit on these students and the faculty who accompany them. And I wish them all a wonderful trip, full of learning and deeply human interaction.