Mark Wygoda, a professor of Zoology, heads the Department of Biology and Health Sciences at McNeese State University (Lake Charles, Louisiana).
On May 2, 2011 he discussed, and illustrated with photographs and documents, the wartime experiences of his late father, Hermann Wygoda, a German-born Polish Jew who during the war fought the Nazis in many ways, becoming sequentially a Warsaw ghetto smuggler, a trusted Berlin courier, and finally a partisan commander in northern Italy who planned attacks against enemy forces, negotiated prisoner exchanges with German commanders, and helped liberate the city of Savona. Three nations later honored him for his work with the Italian resistance. Toward the end of his life, Hermann Wygoda wrote, and his son edited, a memorable account of his career, In the Shadow of the Swastika.
At Oregon State University, we have observed Holocaust Memorial Week every year since 1987. The breadth and the duration of our effort are unmatched in the Pacific Northwest. This program grows from the belief that educational institutions can do much to combat prejudice of all kinds, and to foster respect for the diversity that is America, by promoting an awareness of the Holocaust, perhaps the most horrific historical indicator of the high cost of prejudice. It is particularly important to teach young people about the Holocaust, so that coming generations will not forget the lessons that a preceding one learned at such cost. This emphasis recalls the motto of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum: "For the dead and the living, we must bear witness."
