Closing in on my social media goals

(originally published Sept. 14, 2013, on Eagle Strategies Blog as part of my grad school work)

Three weeks into the fall 2013 semester and one goal is simple: Survive with grace and sanity what I’m facing for the next dozen-plus weeks remaining. From the grading and attendance keeping I do as a teaching assistant to the required tweeting and blogging for one of my classes to the mandatory online responses and submissions in another, it’s all coming down to a numbers game. How much can I get posted and done within the allotted time?
I’ve already purchased a larger planner in which I will (hopefully) get the majority of my calendar down as I coordinate not only those TA responsibilities but also my full-time grad course load and hours at a second job I hold. (Best bosses ever there: I’m allowed to flex what I do around EVERYTHING else, no problem.)
One drawback to my schedule is an inability to utilize the 12-plus commuting hours lost to Interstate 35E on a weekly basis. Unfortunately, I can’t afford a “smart” car (is there such a vehicle?) that can transcribe and transmit tweets as I roll down the road. Not that I could/would anyway as I seemingly have to keep an ear to the radio for traffic reports. But anyone with ideas is more than welcome to suggest them. Perhaps there’s a safe way to multi-task?
As part of my master’s degree, I want to learn new ways to organize and handle my workload with efficiency and skill. I also want to acquire the social and digital media skills that will take my journalism to another level.
I was intrigued during the spring to hear my fellow graduate students talk about Professor Samra Bufkins social media class and what all they were learning. When JOUR 4270/5350 was offered this fall, I quickly signed up. One of my goals specific to this class will be to learn more about Twitter. Although I’ve had an account, I’ve never really utilized it. I recognize it is a growing social media outlet, however, and know that I have to become involved with it and adept in its use. Thanks to some of my classmates’ postings and requirements to be using it on a daily basis, I already feel I am acquiring some new skills.
The class also has a focus on LinkedIn. As with Twitter, I’ve had an account for some time and have used it some. Through this class, however, I am now discovering facets I wasn’t even aware existed.
Without a doubt, I fully expect this semester to challenge me in several ways. My expectation is to meet those to the best of my ability.
With all this said, here’s a fun story from 2012 involving Twitter and the Smart Car brand.

On finding courage

Olympian and USET eventer Denny Emerson: "People seem to understand the power of practice when it comes to skills. You know you'll get better if you practice a riding skill like a shoulder-in or a right-lead canter transition. Well, you can also practice traits. You can practice courage. You can practice self-confidence. You can practice optimism. You can practice things that you might not think are able to be practiced, such as being a better friend to yourself or not always denigrating yourself."

A future for print journalists?

As a print journalist of more than 20 years, I've been discouraged at times in thinking I have no future. That sense of discouragement has centered on two fronts: one, that newspapers appear ever more likely to have a day when they will be no more and, two, that the public isn't stepping up to support true journalism in the void left by advertising dollars now directed toward other media.
By true journalism, I mean written work that is factual and as unbiased as possible. I'm not talking about opinion and 'blogs,' but stories supported by documentation and the truth. If that type of writing goes away, whatever will become of our world?
Earlier today, a friend shared the following story, linked here. Click on it and read the NPR story about a French online news outlet that is not only surviving, but thriving.
Indeed, it seems there is hope for the future! It's just a matter of me finding my spot in this brave new world!

Words of wisdom worth passing along

Pulitzer Prize finalist and Cleveland Plain Dealer columnist Regina Brett wrote an amazing list of life philosophies in her May 2006 column "45 Life Lessons and 5 to Grow On."
Some of my favorites include:
• A writer writes. If you want to be a writer, write.
• When in doubt, just take the next small step.
• Believe in miracles.
They're all good, each and every one.
You should read the entire list and can do so here.

A busy summer break, about to get busier

All in all, it's been a busy summer break since spring classes ended.
I continue to work on my biosolids special topics project and am about to start a new topic on the plight of the wild mustang. These are topics I see myself working on for a long, long time as they both interest me beyond receiving graduate class credit.
Putting my newfound social media skills to work, I have helped one friend set up a website/blog and will be helping a second friend here this weekend. One of my part-time jobs requires my updating two Facebook pages and two websites – and one of those has seen some serious updating and refurbishing.
I help a nonprofit with its Facebook page and website – and I'm happy to see the traffic increasing to both; although that one has come around a bit slower than I had hoped.
An upcoming project I am really excited about is one in which I will be working up the history for the Mayborn Graduate Institute of Journalism at UNT. A little nervous as this is something of a scope I haven't previously attempted but a challenge I can't turn down. (Keep the red flag on the right and kick on!)
And breathe, just breathe.
It's amazing to think, after I complete the five hours this summer and add another nine this fall, that I will be only one credit hour shy of having enough to graduate with my master's degree. The spring will see me still in a full-time capacity so ultimately I will have achieved 44 credit hours.
I'm already thinking ahead to the next step on my path. Not that I'm taking my sights off of what is in front of me but because in the academic world, one must be planning at least a year out to take advantage of opportunities such as grants, fellowships and teaching opportunities.

Quantitative research class starts Monday

Quantitative research class starts Monday, along with a special topics project. It's a five-week session so there will be lots to do and accomplish. My project will take a look at the plight of the wild mustang and some area folks who have adopted one or more of them. To get ahead, I've been reading through the quant-research books to better familiarize myself with the material. That one class is the most feared by graduate journalism students at UNT; I'm thinking, however, that I'm going to really, really like it!

Gun control, media ethics, the public's 'right to know'

In the aftermath of the Sandy Hook Elementary shooting, newspapers were among the media trying to gather as much information as possible and disseminate it to the public.
The Gannett-owned Journal Times (New York) made the decision to publish the names and addresses of gun permit holders in two counties it serves shortly after the incident. It was a move that proved controversial: There was much public outcry against the decision alongside the support cited by the newspaper.
The information, which was released in the form of an interactive map, remained on the newspaper’s website for about 27 days before being removed. The newspaper has said it did not take it down because of public pressure. Rather, the data had likely been viewed by those interested and also was of the type that would go out of date, according to the Journal Times.
It is worth noting, however, that decision was made in the wake of the New York Legislature passing a bill that allowed gun permit holders to opt out of any public release of their information.
My personal belief on this issue is that a newspaper has to consider the thought that while it can do something, should it? The Open Records Act serves a great purpose, but one of the considerations in utilizing it must be whether the information invades people’s privacy. I also feel the Journal Times behaved irresponsibly in that it placed all of the gun permit holders in the same light as the Sandy Hook shooter and his mother.
Perhaps, if the newspaper had taken an additional step and compared the names and addresses of the gun permit holders to additional databases, such as those of convicted felons or police incident reports, there might have been a reason to justify the decision. Such statistical comparisons might have revealed some flaws in the system and that type of revelation would likely have better met with public approval.
I can’t help but feel, however, that all the Journal Times accomplished with its decision to publish was to provide thieves and burglars with a shopping list.
The New York Legislature isn’t the first to act in response to the media’s use of the information. In Texas, for example, the Legislature made the data secret in 2007 after the Associated Press requested information on individual lawmakers.
The main goal should be to keep as much information public as possible. But, again, just because it is public doesn’t mean we, as the media, should use the information irresponsibly or without a purpose that serves the community. And I guess that’s what bothers me the most about the Journal Times’ decision. The newspaper ran the names and addresses because it could and for no valid reason I can discern.
After all, as we discussed in class, rape victims’ names are public in a court of law. That doesn’t mean we should go and shout them from the rooftops without a good reason to do so.
(One of my media ethics class assignments, spring 2013)

Of riding and writing

Here's a link to the class presentation I made at the conclusion of our Readings course at UNT the fall semester 2012. In this course, I drew a comparison between riding fences and working my way through graduate school.
I believe my former full time horse life provided me many skills that have helped me through the years. A primary one is to throw one's heart over the fence ahead. Keep the red flag on the right and all will be well.

Review: "The Craft of Research" (Booth, Colomb & Williams)

I am loving this book - it's the book I should have read before starting my master's program. It certainly would have made my life a lot easier this past year.
There have been several times since starting my master's program that I have questioned whether I missed some sort of orientation. It didn't help that the qualitative research class was filled before I could enroll. That screwed me over with another class I was enrolled in (which should have prerequisites but doesn't for some odd reason).
I find it curious that with about 75 graduate journalism students that the qualitative class is offered only once a year, with maybe 25 seats. The full-semester quantitative class also is only offered once a year. (There is a lighter version offered during one of the five-week summer sessions).
Without being able to get into one of the research classes the first semester is a problem, however, because there is a language spoken around graduate school – and if you don't know it, God help you.
"The Craft of Research" is helping bridge the gap for me without qualitative my first semester and having opted out of enrolling in quantitative my second semester due to the scheduling. (With any luck, I'll take the lighter version of quantitative this summer and then do a special topics project in the spring to gain the full experience). I am enrolled in qualitative (finally) this coming fall.
Within its 300-plus pages (large type and easy to read), there is a wealth of information. The authors do suggest reading it twice if you're a beginner (like me) in academic research. For those people with more skills, they offer a gameplan for which chapters can be skipped.
After some of my experiences my first year, I especially appreciate the authors' compassionate tone. On Page 66, they write: "Know that uncertainty and anxiety are natural and inevitable. Those feelings don't signal incompetence, only inexperience."
I will complete my first reading and read it again. There already are several dog-eared pages. This book is one for the permanent personal library.

Summer reading: Dennis Palumbo's 'Writing from the Inside Out'

Between semesters and there's time to read those 'extra' books I bought since starting graduate school. Working my way through 'Writing from the Inside Out' by Dennis Palumbo now and finding some interesting insights into the writing process.
Palumbo's book is based on his experiences as a writer – and also his work as a therapist. His advice for writer's angst is to embrace it. Don't run from it; don't ignore it; don't try and cure it. Embrace it.
"Unquestionably, there's nothing more painful about the writing process than struggling against feelings of self-doubt, even self-loathing," he writes.
It's about accepting both our angels and our demons. Between the two exists a synergy that can be tapped.
As Palumbo writes, "Along with feeling the pain of [the inner critic's] intense scrutiny, we can develop the courage to challenge the self-defeating meaning we give to that pain."

Recreating journalism

Back in 2008, a good journalist friend of mine forwarded me the following career advice. I'm not sure of the authorship, so my apologies for an inability to attribute. If someone out there does know, please advise so I can give credit where credit is due! Anyway, here are some great tips for being a journalist in the social media era.
---
Here are twelve things journalist can do to help us recreate journalism for the 21st Century.
    •    Become a blogger. By this, I don’t necessarily mean “start a blog,” but that is never a bad idea. More importantly, become an avid blog reader. Blogs should be a daily routine for every dedicated journalist. They should read every blog related to their beats. They should read blogs about their own interests and hobbies. They should read blogs about their profession. To get blogging is to get how things have changed.
    •    Become a producer. Pick up a digital recorder, a point-and-shoot camera or a video camera and start producing content beyond text. Do this as part of your job, fine, or do it on your personal time. The goal is to understand DIY. Post stuff on YouTube, Flickr or any number of other UGC sites.
    •    Participate. As you read blogs, leave comments. If your newspaper.com has comments on stories, read the comments and add your own. Become known as somebody who converses on the Internet.
    •    Build a web site. It will greatly expand your mind about how the web works if you go a bit beyond just setting up an account on Blogger or WordPress. Learn a little HTML. Better yet, learn some PHP, Cold Fusion, JavaScript or other web development language. You should own your own domain, anyway.
    •    Become web literate. You should know what Flash is, and how it differs from AJAX. You should know the meaning of things like HTML, RSS, XML, IP, HTTP and FTP. You should understand at least how people use applications and tools to build web sites. You should know the potential and the limitations of each.
    •    Use RSS. You need an RSS reader and lots of RSS feeds to consume. This will help you better grok distributed media.
    •    Shop online. Part of your goal is to become immersed in the digital lifestyle. You will learn stuff about the digital life if you shop on Amazon, Ebay and other ecommerce sites. As you do, think about how these sites work and why they’re set up as they are.
    •    Buy mobile devices. Get a video iPod. Get a smart phone (an iPhone, Treo, Helio Ocean or Nokia N-series are all good places to start). Learn about distributed, take-it with-you-anywhere content. Buy a laptop and tap into some free wi-fi while you’re out and about. Learn what digital life is like when you’re not shackled to a desktop machine.
    •    Become an avid consumer of digital content. Watch videos on YouTube. Download video and audio podcasts (take them with you on your iPod). Visit the best newspaper sites in the world and watch what they’re doing. Turn on your TV less and your computer more.
    •    Be a learner. Technology and culture is changing fast. You can’t keep up unless you’re dedicated to learning. I love this quote from Eric Hoffer because it is so appropriate to what our industry is going through now: “In a time of drastic change it is the learners who inherit the future. The learned usually find themselves beautifully equipped to live in a world that no longer exists.”
    •    Talk about what you’re learning with your co-workers. Be a change agent. Get other journalists excited about the new digital communication/media tools.
    •    Finally, read Journalism 2.0 (PDF) <http://www.j-lab.org/Journalism_20.pdf>  by Mark Briggs. You’ll learn about the stuff covered above and how it is changing modern journalism. Brigg’s book is the best primer on the topic you will find.
Quality journalism, and the news organizations that finance it, needs individual journalists to become personally responsible for their own role in changing newsroom cultures and practices. The smartest publishers with the greatest strategic plans (even if they had bottomless buckets of cash to execute on all the best ideas) can’t save news organizations without the concerted support of individual journalists.

One last bit of advice: Don’t wait for a boss to tell you to become a learner and an explorer. Your job is just where you collect your paycheck. You career is what you do. Your boss isn’t responsible for your career. You are. Solely. Don’t wait on others to make changes. Start making changes now for your own benefit. It’s great if your employer benefits from your growth, but you will benefit more.

Living life in the sunshine

My backyard, my dogs, my life, my loves.

Some tips from award-winning author Jeff Guinn on interviewing, research

(Writer's note: Award-winning author Jeff Guinn recently addressed our JOUR 5310 Media Ethics class at the Frank W. Mayborn Graduate Institute of Journalism at the University of North Texas. Here's a piece I worked up on that visit.)

Award-winning author Jeff Guinn does more than write good books. He readily hands out good advice to aspiring journalists.
Some of the best tips he offers involve interviewing. These are conversations, not interrogations, he says, adding that it’s his responsibility “to make [his subjects] feel comfortable.”
His isn’t an “in-the-face” approach but rather one of self-deprecation. It’s an approach that typically pays off.
“Everyone likes to have a conversation with someone they feel comfortable with,” he says.
His most recent work, a biography of California murderer Charles Manson, saw him gain interviews with several people who had previously refused media contact. Those interviews could be credited as likely making his work the most comprehensive to date on Manson, who remains incarcerated in prison.
Ironically, the one interview Guinn was unable to achieve was that of Manson, whose visitation rights had been revoked. The only contact between him and Guinn has been through letters, which have included threats from Manson.
While Guinn notes that Manson still has followers on the outside, the former investigative reporter seemingly shrugs off any danger as going with the territory of writing about the notorious killer.
The same idea of having a conversation is how Guinn suggests finding the first words for a new work. With all of the research done, imagine describing it to someone else.
“What would be the first thing I would tell a significant other?” he says.
Before penning his first words for his Manson book, Guinn estimates he conducted from 150 to 200 interviews and read from 80 to 100 books. He refers to his primary organizational tool for all of that material as a “timeline.”
Drawing from another author’s tip on how to set up and use a timeline, Guinn documents every piece of material in chronological order as soon as it is received. He says he’s found this is the best way to track everything and notes the timeline for the Manson materials came to about 400 pages.
As far as selecting a topic, Guinn picks a time in history about which he wants to know more and one that includes an iconographic figure. His research leads him to look at not only what happened, but why.
“Real history is almost always more interesting than the mythology,” he says.
That truth is what he also sought when working as an investigative reporter. Several of his newspaper series had major impact, including one on the plight of homeless people in Fort Worth.
“You write investigative pieces to bring information to the public and to public officials,” he says. “You don’t have the power to act but you do have the power to persuade.”
Journalists can become too comfortable in what they do and for Guinn one way to avoid that trap was to put himself into his subjects’ shoes and record first-hand the poignancies in their lives.
It was a way to help people and one where “I tried to make a little bit of difference,” he says, noting the world needs the truth along with its storytellers.

Learning about student success

This week, I was fortunate to take part in the University Forum on Teaching and Learning here at the University of North Texas, with Dr. Cassandre Alvarado from the University of Texas at Austin serving as keynote speaker.

What an inspiring woman!

Alvarado’s presentation on “What is Student Success Really?” began with her pointing out the biggest problem facing upper education is too many students don’t succeed. They’re not reaching their potential, says Alvarado, who defines success as “more than content knowledge.”

She asked those of us at the forum to each think about our own personal heroes before sharing that hers is Thomas Edison. Although some may picture him as working in solitude en route to creating the light bulb, in fact, he established a scientific lab where he employed a staff of 75, she says, noting that while he found extraordinary success (2,000 patents-worth), he also discovered “10,000 ways the light bulb didn’t work.”

As the presentation continued, Alvarado continued to give us her insights as well as lead us through round table discussions on an exploration of what success is and how we can best help our students find it.

One way she encouraged us to connect with students is to be willing to share with them our own stories of success that include the struggles and challenges we faced in their achievement. Students need to know it isn’t easy and they’re not the first ones who encountered obstacles.

In defining perseverance, Alvarado quotes Edison: “Nearly every man who develops an idea works at it up to the point where it looks impossible, and then gets discouraged. That’s not the place to become discouraged.”

Discovery is imagination, says Alvarado, who uses another quote from Edison: “The value of an idea lies in the value of using it.” Students need to use their imagination and develop their critical thinking skills and she suggests rewarding effort as well as correctness in students’ work (referencing teaching methods used in an introductory physics class at Harvard). Students need to understand not only the right and wrong about an answer but also the whys of each.

She went on to ask her own question of our audience: “How have you used your imagination?”

A student’s route to success also includes finding a sense of community (and the inherent support it offers) both inside and outside of the classroom. As an example, UT-Austin has created “learning communities” that have led to an increase in student retention rates. Although the students who are struggling continue to do so, the university has found they are staying in school and making the decision to persist toward their goals, Alvarado says.

Summing up her presentation, Alvarado said the “picture of success” (PIC) can be found in getting these three elements – perseverance, imagination and community –

Into students’ lives.

One of my weekly reports this semester ...

Spring break was my time to catch up and get ahead. I finally felt there was enough time to do some in-depth reading. After a fruitful trip to Half-Price Books that yielded almost a dozen books to my ever-growing collection, I almost immediately found myself wishing I could read even faster than I do. More than half of the books related to the ICM class, which meant my spring break to-do list also increased. The books for this class have been quite informative, with lots of practical advice and tips.

A meeting was held Saturday in which I feel my questions were answered and a concern or two I had were addressed. With that said, I am disappointed with the “Mean Girls” demeanor and behavior, which included eye-rolling and patronizing responses as directed toward one of our classmates who had called in via telephone.

It’s obvious some of you are frustrated with this person, but she is a teammate, still. I hadn’t witnessed that frustration manifested to such an extent until this meeting, possibly because Carli B. wasn’t present as the overall group leader. Whatever the reason may have been, get over it and behave.

Part of what we are to learn in this class is how to work through a major group project that involves a diversity of people and opinions. It is a lifelong learning process but what we all need to take away from this is the proper way to handle things and not learned behavior that includes inappropriate, unprofessional mannerisms.

Have I made my share of mistakes in the past with people? Absolutely, yes! One of the reasons I am in graduate school is to learn how to do things better, both through study and observation, because there is always room for improvement. It was wrong of me not to say something about this during the meeting. More and more, “spiral of silence” is proving to be the one theory I’ve learned during my time at Mayborn that strikes home. In this case, I personally let a classmate down by not coming to her defense and saying, “Enough!”

Yes, this report is late being turned in. I left the meeting, went to Fort Worth to see a TCU play my niece is involved in, stopped by a business, got home, fed the dogs, forgot the report was due and did other things. It’s later still because I wanted to look back on a couple of things from the discussions already posted. Here are several observations:

• At the most, based on my calculations and by looking at the data posted by BlackBoard, seven people in this class read every single resume posted. Perhaps if we had all done that, there might be a little more respect and a better ability to “agree to disagree.”

• It’s obvious that many in the class aren’t reading every posting. Yes, it’s a pain in the neck and time-consuming (especially if you don’t know how to “collect” them to read all at once and then “mark all” as “read.” But perhaps we all could get along better if we really tried to understand each other’s styles and what we each have tried to bring to the table.

• To the person who said to my face, “You shouldn’t put anything into a plan if you don’t know what you’re talking about” before going on to say, “I learned this in class,” well, I can appreciate what you say you’ve learned but you don’t know me. You’re likely one of the 11 people in this class that didn’t bother to read my resume. You don’t know (or don’t care) that my experience includes working for a newspaper that also published a semi-annual tourism guide and a general interest/feature magazine and where I had primary input. I do know what I’m talking about. I may have failed in how my ideas were communicated to you, but the appropriate way to address that is to say, “I’m not sure what you mean here. This isn’t the way I’ve learned how to do that. Can you explain your thoughts to me so I can understand where you are coming from?” I thought of bringing you copies of my work, but decided it wasn’t worth the time and effort to defend myself against someone who had already patronized me.

• I would agree I have learned much about the topic of integrated communications marketing in this class, albeit some of it painfully. Still, my eyes have been opened to an entirely new area of thought. Just this morning I came across a ProPublica article, “No Windows. One Exit. Free Drinks: Casino-Driven Design for Crowdsourcing,” that saw my mind click as to how it relates to what we have been studying and the possibilities of how I could incorporate this into future work.

• And with the above, a long, although I hope not rambling, weekly report is done.

My historical essay: The photographs of Faye Schulman

Note: This work was originally presented Nov. 28, 2012, in my JOUR 5030 class, and updated March 17, 2013.

A photographer become partisan fighter speaks: “I wait in silence amongst the pine trees on the outskirts of the town. The town is achingly familiar to me; every street, every corner brings back memories. I hold a loaded rifle firmly in my hands” (Schulman, 1995, p. 17).

This passage is from the memoirs of Faigel “Faye” Lazebnik Schulman, a young Jewish woman who survived World War II while serving as a partisan fighter, a role she documented through her photography.

“Here is my camera, the original camera that I have since 1939,” Schulman recalls in a 2009 video for the Jewish Partisan Educational Foundation. “This camera, I took pictures when the Russians occupied. I took pictures when the Nazis occupied and I took pictures in the partisans.”

Under both the Russian and Nazi occupations, as well as with the partisans, Schulman was tasked with taking photographs among her other duties.

“Every, every picture almost has its story what to tell and all the stories are my memories so I cannot really separate one from another,” Schulman says (JPEF, 2009).

There is one photograph, however, she did not take but is forever seared in her mind. It is a photograph the JPEF has included in a traveling exhibit of her work: Pictures of Resistance: The Wartime Photographs of Jewish Partisan Faye Schulman.

The photograph, which was taken by the Nazis, is of a trench filled with the bodies of Jewish men, women and children. Ordered by the Nazis to develop their film, Schulman recognized within the negatives the Aug. 14, 1942, massacre of her village’s Jewish population. The photography skills for which the Nazis spared Schulman’s life that day were the ones she used to make prints of her family’s murder for their murderers.

“The Nazis took pictures of the killing. They later gave me the films to develop and I made copies for myself. Was this why my life had been spared?” she asks in her 1995 book, A Partisan’s Memoir: Woman of the Holocaust.

For Schulman, that image would push her to stay alive, not only to escape from the Nazis and go on to serve as a partisan fighter and nurse, but also to photograph what she could of the resistance efforts.

To this day, the ongoing effort to educate people about the Holocaust remains important to Schulman, who told this writer in a November 2012 interview she feels strongly that the images should be seen and their respective stories heard. “[Educating the world] is a job that is very important to do so this will never happen again. As long as people will remember what happened, it won’t happen again. This is what I hope,” Schulman says (Livingston, 2012).

The exhibit, which closed a three-month run at the Dallas Holocaust Museum in November 2012, includes these words from Schulman: “I want people to know that there was resistance. Jewish people didn’t go like sheep to the slaughter. If they had the slightest opportunity to fight back, they did and took revenge. Many lost their lives heroically. I was a photographer. I have pictures. I have proof.”

All of Schulman’s photographs were taken with a Doppel Anastigmat fielding camera equipped with a Zess Ikon lens; it is a camera she still has. She was given the equipment by her brother, who had trained her in his photography business prior to the war (Schulmann, 1995, p. 90). It was this camera she continued to use even as their village of Lenin first went under Soviet occupation in 1939 before ending up under Nazi control in 1941.

In a 2000 video produced by Martha Lubell for PBS, Schulman recalls working as a photographer under the Nazis and being summoned to take a photograph of their regional commander in the weeks leading up to the village massacre:

I looked at him and he was like an animal. I knew he’s a killer; I knew he killed already in the thousands. I covered myself up to look into the lens from the camera, and I saw that if I will take this portrait, he will kill me. He looked like, scary. So can you imagine I, a Jewish girl, said to the Gebitz Commissar, “Smile,” and I took another picture smiling. He showed his teeth, but his eyes were still like an animal. So he was very happy, and of course no thank you, no nothing. Who wanted a thank you as long as he’s not killing me.

Photography was both a positive and a negative for Schulman. On one hand, her skills allowed her to keep working and provide for her parents and siblings in what the Nazis had set up as a ghetto inside of her village. On the other, she was unable to use the mobility it gave her and escape. This was because of a “collective responsibility” policy rigidly enforced by the Nazis that stipulated, if a Jew fled, retribution would be exacted on the family members left behind (Phillips, 2011).

Schulman was thus unable to join the partisan effort before she did because to have done so would have been to sign her family’s death warrants early. Even after her family was killed in the massacre, she still hesitated to escape because there will still a few Jews in the village.

“I could have escaped. I had the opportunity, but if I would have escaped, the family would be killed or 50 other people would be killed,” she said (Lubell, 2000). “Was it more morally right to leave the ghetto community and confront the enemy as a free agent or should one stay to protect the populace? Never before had we been confronted with moral issues of such magnitude,” she wrote in her memoirs (p. 79-80).

The fateful day of the massacre, Schulman and a few other “useful Jews” the Nazis decided to spare were ordered into a synagogue. From a window in the attic, she watched as the remaining Jewish villagers – her family members among them – were marched or hauled away to the woods, to a spot where several weeks earlier the men had been forced to dig three long trenches. From the window she could hear the shots ring out; she could hear the screams (Schulman, 1995, p. 87).

She was not able to see what happened, however, until she developed the Nazis’ negatives – and that image from the trenches spurred her drive to stay alive and, once she escaped, to join the partisans and take her own photographs so others would know the truth.

Seventy years later, it is still that image though that haunts her with unanswered questions. For Schulman, there is a continued pain in wondering what transpired in the final minutes of her loved ones’ lives: Were her father and mother shot before and in front of their children and grandchildren? Were the children forced to witness their parents’ deaths, their grandparents’ deaths before they were tossed into the trenches? (Livingston, 2012).

Nazis were not known to waste bullets on children and Schulman believes her younger brother, nephew and niece were likely buried alive (Schulman, 1995, p. 88).

“I have questions, like, when they killed my whole family, my sister and her two babies, a 4-year-old boy and a 2-year-old girl … I have questions to myself [and] now I have nobody to even ask,” she says (Livingston, 2012).

Several weeks after the atrocity occurred, Schulman and the remaining Jews made their escape when the partisans launched an attack on the Nazis stationed in Lenin. Schulman fled to the forest, where she convinced the Molotava Brigade to let her join. In the ensuing weeks, she and the other partisans would hear horrific details about the three trenches where “more than 1,850 Jewish men, women and children had been murdered and buried” (Schulman, 1995, p. 16).

“The Nazis had covered the graves with dirt and sand, but days later the grounds still continued to shift as the bodies settled; the top layer cracked and blood continued to seep out. Three times they covered the graves; three times the graves opened, like a giant bleeding wound,” Schulman wrote in her memoirs (p. 16-17).

There is pain for Schulman when explains what was occurring: “The grounds were still moving three days after the killing. So, you can imagine, people were shot but not everybody got shot in the chest or in the head” (Livingston, 2012).

Instead, she reflects, it was likely there were a number of wounded people who lay trapped amongst the dead and dying:

Some people don’t die right away, so I know how it is but this is what I think: How was it with my family? How did they die? Did they scream? Because I heard that three days after the killing, after they liquidated the ghetto and they killed my whole population, the Jewish people … the grounds were still moving three days after the killing. So you can imagine, people were still … they were shot but not everybody [was shot fatally]. I hope they didn’t suffer too much. I’m talking to you and I’m crying (Livingston, 2012).

Several weeks after joining the partisans, Schulman would make her return to her village, this time as a fighter, as referenced in this paper’s opening paragraph. It was then that Schulman retrieved the camera she had left behind upon escaping, the camera she would now use over the course of the next two-and-a-half years to document the partisans. She talks about her camera on the JPEF video:

This very camera was buried in the ground many times when I was on assignment with the partisans. I would take the camera out and it still works. Always the same camera. I would never like to part, as long as I live, with this camera. It has so many memories and stories. So many things happened and this camera has seen everything (2009).

With the camera, Schulman made a record of the partisans and their life in the forests, including photos that included herself in her roles as fighter and nurse. She took photographs of her fellow partisans to share with them and also used her camera on reconnaissance missions. Being a photographer helped her existence among the partisans and Schulman can be seen in many of the photos, smiling. Smiling was something she said she did to indicate hope, whether she was showing that hope to one of her patients or to other partisans around her (Livingston, 2012).

Dealing with the personal burden of losing her family was just one of many challenges Schulman faced during her service as a partisan and her work as a fighter, nurse and photographer. With all of those duties she had to do her best and each had its own particular obstacles.

As a partisan, Schulman chose to participate in almost every mission for reasons that were several-fold: She wanted to fight and the raids provided opportunities to scavenge for medical and photography supplies.

The conditions under which Schulman had to do her photography were more than austere. She had to make her own developer, which she stored in empty vodka bottles. To develop her film, she had to wait for moonless nights and find a spot by a river so as to have an ample supply of water. She had to bury everything when she was not carrying it. There was no darkroom to work in so she used blankets when she developed her negatives (Vexler, 2011) and sunlight when she created prints (JPEF, 2009).

When the JPEF exhibit appeared in Berkeley, Calif., one reviewer included an attendee’s thoughts about Schulman’s work under such circumstances.

“She couldn’t just go to a store to buy film to take pictures – she had extraordinary circumstances that made photographing her experience an unbelievable challenge,” said Dave Glass, a freelance documentary photographer who is himself the son of Holocaust survivors. “But I understand why she did it. If you’re a photographer, it’s just in your blood, in your soul. You have to record and document it (Palevsky, 2009).

Schulman is quoted in the JPEF exhibit as saying, “No forests. No partisans,” in credit to those woods for their role in aiding the partisans. Still, the conditions were harsh:

… these partisan units lived and fought under tremendously difficult conditions. Life in the forests of Nazi-occupied Europe meant enduring harsh winters with minimal clothing and temporary shelters, seeking food from villages and farms or from within the forest, and always staying one step ahead of a Nazi-German army and its collaborators that were determined to annihilate the Jewish people. The fragility of life under these circumstances becomes central to understanding the conditions under which these units of armed fighters existed (Phillips, 2011).

Among Schulman’s photographs are those of herself. In one photograph she is seen holding the automatic weapon she learned to use that fired 60 bullets with the single pull of the trigger. There are others of herself as nurse: one where she is assisting with a surgery and another where she is dressing an injured partisan’s leg wound. Often, she would compose images in the viewfinder of her camera and then step into them, directing another partisan to trip the shutter.

On one of the partisan missions against the Nazis in her hometown, Schulman would set a torch to her family home after discovering it was being used by the Nazis. She would later photograph its ruins:

We left the town, I looked back. I saw the fire, the smoke of my house. I came back after a few weeks. We attacked again the town and I took a picture and this was what was left from the town. And three crosses. Three Nazis who were killed when the partisans attacked, so they buried the three Nazis in front of our house (Lubell, 2000).

It was Schulman’s goal to take photographs that could serve as documentation of the partisan efforts:

I was thinking that it was life, that it was resistance. I am Jewish and there were Jewish boys and Jewish girls, but not so many girls. [The partisans included] Russian and Jewish and other nationalities that I had never probably heard of their existence [before the war]. … I was thinking, if I would take the photographs, if I would be killed, at least the pictures would tell the story for the whole world to know there were Jewish people in the Russian partisans, and they were together with the Russians, fighting the Nazis.

There were hundreds and hundreds of groups. Almost every big city had a group of resistance fighters, but nobody knew it. And, not even now, there is not much talking about it. So many are dead. So many were killed (Livingston, 2012).

Even with her service to the partisans as a fighter, nurse and photographer, Schulman did not take her time with the partisans for granted because she was both Jewish and female. In her memoirs, she provides details about the fine path she had to tread at times and how she had to remain vigilant as to her own security.

In her Study Guide Jewish Women in the Partisans, Shana Penn writes, “[S]killed or not, the partisans mainly regarded Jews as liabilities, not as resources, because the presence of Jews threatened the security of the secret combat units. The Nazis and their collaborators hunted runaway Jews tenaciously, and local populations, though they might be loyal to the partisans, would often betray Jews in exchange for food or other bribes. Some partisan units preferred to kill Jews than harbor them due to their own anti-Semitic beliefs” (2012).

Many of the partisan groups were comprised of diverse people brought together under the horrific circumstances. Schulman, a Jew, was herself a member of a brigade led by Soviet officers who had escaped Nazi prison camps. Still, they found unity and a common goal of fighting back against the Nazi regime.

In a 2011 article, Carson Phillips, an educator with the Sarah and Chaim Neuberger Holocaust Education Centre in Toronto, wrote: “Outnumbered and against overwhelming odds, the partisans are an element to understanding the diverse ways in which Jews resisted the genocidal actions of the Nazis. Whether it was through physical, spiritual, or emotional resistance, Jews defied the Nazis with whatever means they could.”

For JPEF executive director Mitch Braff, Schulman’s work “is one of the best ways that JPEF can reach thousands of people in communities all over the world, some of whom have never heard of the Jewish partisan experience. … The images are a visual testament to the thousand of Jewish boys and girls who heroically fought against the Nazis and shatters the myth of Jewish passivity during the Holocaust” (2009).

After the war, Schulman returned to her career as a photographer but found both herself and the world were different:

I tried. I wanted to, but it was not the same somehow. … I didn’t find the interest in the people unless someone was getting married or it was something like that they wanted to remember. Nobody was interested. Besides, to tell you the truth, the Jews were murdered or killed so who am I going to take pictures of? I wasn’t interested myself (Livingston, 2012).

For Schulman, there are many more images and stories from the war than just the ones she experienced. Through the years she has continued to read others’ accounts and books, on occasion learning from them a friend’s fate. Some of her photographs have found their way back to her, in one case allowing her to reconnect with a fellow partisan. Although she no longer travels, she continues to share her knowledge and experiences with those who ask. She is proud that her memoirs are included in coursework on the Holocaust and taught at Duke University (Livingston, 2012).

Schulman wants the world to know it was not just the Jewish population that was targeted during World War II and recounts the story of how the Nazis, after massacring the Jews in her village, would later turn on its non-Jewish population:

And you know how they killed them? For the non-Jews, there were no trenches. The 5,000 non-Jews were put in a huge barrack, a huge, huge building, surrounded with heavy artillery. And [the Nazis] put the building on fire and they burned the 5,000 alive. If someone tried to escape, they were shot. People think the Nazis only killed the Jewish people but they killed everybody. They burned them alive, can you imagine? (Livingston, 2012).

For Schulman, there continues to be grief and mourning for the loss of her family and friends, as well as the countless others who perished during the Holocaust.

“It’s hard for me to talk about it,” she says. “I wish people would never forget what happened because it happened to many religions. It was not only to the Jews, but to all religions. That was inhumane what they did, the Nazis” (Livingston, 2012).

There is some peace for her in knowing she took photos that serve as proof of what happened.

“It does help to have the photos. When I speak to people and they see something is written and there are photographs … especially with schoolchildren, when I know they are looking at life entirely different now and they appreciate what life is all about, it makes me feel good,” she says (Livingston, 2012).

Dr. Jill Vexler, who curated the Schulman photo exhibit, discussed the work during a 2011 appearance at the University of Michigan.

“We have photographs. They are unusual. They are rare. Faye is believed to be the only known Jewish woman partisan photographer in the world,” Vexler said.

During her presentation, Vexler referenced an eyewitness to the atrocities who spoke during the war with upper level British and U.S. officials – but his accounts were not believed. She raised the question of whether photos from within the Holocaust, if those had been seen by the international community at that time, would have helped change the war’s course and duration.

“The anthropologist in me needs the artifact, so the work of Faye Schulman is all the more important and will continue to be important into the future,” Vexler said, noting that while digital images can be manipulated, “we have Faye’s negatives and they are in pristine condition.”

Schulman’s memoirs speak of her desire to fight back against the Nazis, and Vexler, who spent several days with her while working on the exhibit, recalls also:

Faye is very clear about a word … and that is vengeance. It’s real, it’s a very powerful emotion we know and it propelled her survival. It was her need for vengeance. … It was her camera that saved her. She participated. … She is among many, many amazing people. I dread the day our society no longer has these people, but we have her photographs. It is an extraordinary, an extraordinary legacy (Vexler, 2011).

The JPEF exhibit points out that circumstances prevented Schulman from keeping every negative and photograph she took. Quite simply, she could not carry them all forward from her time as a partisan to her initial relocation after the war to Russia, and from there to being married and a move with her husband into a displaced persons camp before emigrating to Canada. Schulman has described those she was able to retain as the “memory ones.”

Today, almost 30 of the images are on view with the JPEF exhibit, which notes: “Still [the photos] provide invaluable visual documentation of the partisans’ accomplishments.”

In her memoirs, Schulman writes of that first time she returned to her village as a partisan fighter:

Not far from where I am standing are the three trenches where members of my family and my friends were so brutally murdered. Overwhelmed by emotion, I imagine again this picture of horror. If I could, I would lie down on the ground, stretch out my arms and embrace the blood-soaked earth. I want to close my eyes and fall asleep with my loved ones forever. Instead I see their faces. I hear their voices whispering, “No! Don’t give up. Now you have a rifle. Fight! Avenge us and defend yourself.” I am no longer afraid. I hold my loaded rifle firmly in my hands (p. 17).

The JPEF video adds: “Joining the partisans was Faye Schulman’s path to survival and her chance to avenge the deaths of her family members. Being a partisan became Faye’s way of life. Her life is representative of thousands of others, with one extraordinary difference: Faye [also] had a camera.”

References

Braff, M. (2009). Happy birthday! Faye turns 90! Retrieved November 25, 2012, from http://jewishpartisans.blogspot.com/2009/12/happy-birthday-faye-turns-90.html

Jewish Partisan Educational Foundation video, biography and images: Faye Schulman. (2009). Retrieved November 6, 2012, from http://www.jewishpartisans.org/t_switch.php?pageName=mini+bio+short+bio+1&fromSomeone=&parnum=56

Livingston, J. A. (2012). Personal notes/interview with Faye Schulman

Lubell, M. (2000). Daring to resist: Three women face the Holocaust. Retrieved November 16, 2012, from http://www.pbs.org/daringtoresist/tgtranscript.html

Palevsky, S. (2009). Rare photos show hidden life of partisans who fought Nazis. Retrieved November 25, 2012, from http://www.jweekly.com/article/full/37486/rare-photos-show-hidden-life-of-partisans-who-fought-nazis/

Penn, S. (2012). Study guide Jewish women in the partisans. Retrieved November 20, 2012, from http://www.jewishpartisans.org/t_switch.php?pageName=educator+women&gloss=false

Phillips, C. (2011). Partisans: The unseen heroes of the Holocaust. Retrieved November 25, 2012, from http://mnjcc.wordpress.com/2011/05/20/partisans-the-unseen-heroes-of-the-holocaust/

Schulman, F. (1995). A partisan’s memoir: Woman of the holocaust. Toronto, Ontario: Second Story Press.

Vexler, J. (2011). Video: Photographer as witness: Proof enough? Retrieved November 25, 2012, from http://www.jillvexler.com/exhibit_schulman.htm#

Vexler, J. (2012). Exhibit: Pictures of resistance: The wartime photographs of Jewish partisan Faye Schulman