Ongoing Research Efforts
2013 is proving to be a busy year for the Fr. Viktor project. In 2012, we were contacted by Dr. Christopher Mauriello, the Chair of History at Salem State University. He is researching case of "forced confrontation," incidents in which American soldiers forced German civilians to disinter and rebury victims of Nazi death marches at the end of WWII. He happened to find this site during a Google search, and has been in contact with Katherine ever since.
On September 27-28, 2013, both Chris and Katherine co-presented a paper at the Midwest World History Association's 2013 Conference. The paper was titled, The 48-Hour Ultimatum: US Soldiers and Forced Confrontation of German Civilians in Schwarzenfeld, Germany, April '45, and we're pleased to say that it was well-received by an audience of historical scholars. We had a full house (about 30 seats), none of which were empty. The paper was followed by a vigorous Q&A session, which we took as a positive sign. People were clearly enthused, engaged, and interested in learning more about Fr. Viktor's impact upon Schwarzenfeld.
Katherine extends her thanks to Dr. Mauriello for his interest in Schwarzenfeld. It's especially heartening to have our research backed by a professional scholar of his caliber. She also wishes to thank Fr. Rob Carbonnau, C.P., for his continuing encouragement to take the story to academic circles, and his help on acquiring citations to support the Passionist material in her part of the co-written paper.
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