Teaching History Matters

Wed. April 6, SUNY GENESEO, Kenneth Roemer Lecture, Doty Recital Hall 205. 2.30 PM. Free.

Tomorrow I am heading to address my college alma mater for its annual Roemer Lecture on World Affairs, followed by a President’s Reception at SUNY GENESEO, south of Rochester, NY.

I was actually invited for Spring 2020, but you can guess what happened. The next year, the campus was not yet fully open, and I did not relish doing a remote gig. I wanted to return; after all, I met my best friends in life here, including my future wife. We were married here, and I almost settled here, except for a pesky detail-for the life of me, I could not find a job teaching history anywhere in western New York.

I did my student teaching practice under the tutelage of Dr. Wayne Mahood, and Dr. John Herlihy and his teacher wife Myra at Geneseo & Livonia High Schools; all were huge influence on me, mentored me, encouraged me when somedays it felt hopeless. But I had one thing going for me, I really knew my history. In fact, I had loaded up on so many undergrad history courses that I had to go back after my BA to get my education credits and student teaching in.

But I could not find that elusive job; I remember coming in SECOND for the open Geneseo High social studies position (a board member told me!) competing against other 80 applicants.

Crushed, I turned my sights back towards home after doing a stint at the local summer school. I was hired by Principal John Christopher for grades 7,8,9 three weeks before school started in 1986, up on the third floor of St. Mary’s Academy in Glens Falls, then just a shell of its former glory, though I recall it with fondness. The high school closed two years later, I think; I had by then moved on to my high school alma mater, Hudson Falls High School, where I would spend the remainder of my 30+ year career.

But then, the magic that we created at HFHS is the reason for my being invited this week to address the college body, staff and students. The cosmos beckoned in my work at home, and abroad, but now I am returning with the story that I hope will be judged inspirational-though unfortunately it seems the topic is always relevant.

Just because I retired from the classroom doesn’t mean that I’m not still an educator, and education is the key. Maybe I’ll see you there. Next stop, Germany. More later.

Roemer Lecture on WWII Liberation

Educator and author Matthew Rozell ’83, ’88 MS, will deliver the annual Kenneth Roemer Lecture on World Affairs at SUNY Geneseo. His talk, “Liberation, 1945: An American GI Response to the Holocaust During WWII,” will take place at 2:30 p.m. on Wednesday, April 6, in the Doty Recital Hall. The event is free and open to the public. Please note that masks are required in all buildings on campus.

On April 13, 1945, three weeks before the end of World War II in Europe, two tank commanders of the 743rd Tank Battalion of the U.S. Ninth Army overran a train transport near Magdeburg, Germany, filled with 2,500 Jewish concentration camp victims, many of them children. One of the tank commanders had a Kodak Brownie camera and recorded the rescue. The dozen snapshots taken that day were stored a shoebox in the back of a closet for over 60 years until brought to light by a high school oral history project interviewing WWII soldiers. 

Rozell is an award-winning history teacher, author, speaker, and blogger on World War II and the Holocaust. He taught at Hudson Falls (NY) High School for thirty years. In 2009, he and his class helped to reunite more than 275 Holocaust survivors with their American soldier-liberators and were featured as an ABC World News Person of the Week. The work was later released as his 2016 book, A Train Near Magdeburg, which is in production for a major documentary film, and was recently featured on C-SPAN’s Book TV.

Rozell’s teaching has also been featured by the CBS Evening News, NBC Learn, the Israeli Broadcast Authority, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, and New York State United Teachers. His multi-volume oral history book series of World War II, The Things Our Fathers Saw, has sold over a half-million copies in various formats.

The Kenneth Roemer Lecture on World Affairs is a memorial to Roemer’s longstanding interest in global issues. Spencer J. Roemer, emeritus director of admissions at Geneseo and member of the Geneseo Foundation Board of Directors, endowed the series in his brother’s name.