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As studies of antisemitism on American faculty campuses proceed to swirl because the Oct. 7 Hamas terror assaults on Israel, one piano professor at Tennessee Tech University in Cookeville, Tennessee, has been discovering her personal approach by way of the difficulty.
She’s spent her profession working to coach and inform college students — by way of music and considerate dialog — as she promotes a higher understanding of the historical past of the Jewish individuals.
She works to counter antisemitism as properly.
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“So many students today do not really understand what they are seeing in the news,” Dr. Catherine Godes, music professor at Tennessee Tech, advised Fox News Digital.
“I think knowing the history, they can hear about what’s going on with more understanding and maybe more empathy. You can still have your opinions, but with a little bit more perspective on what’s really happening. Education is the key to understanding.”
Catherine Godes, professor of music at Tennessee Tech in Cookeville, Tennessee, has spent her profession educating college students on music and fascinating them in dialog to “counter antisemitism,” she advised Fox News Digital. (Tennessee Tech University)
Godes gained an understanding by way of her late husband, world-renowned Latvian pianist Herman Godes.
He spent 4 brutal years as a prisoner within the Buchenwald Nazi focus camp. It’s a story of struggling and survival that she shares with college students who’re prepared to pay attention.
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“Herman was born in 1917, in the beautiful city of Riga, Latvia, which was then a part of the Soviet Union,” Godes mentioned.
“His mother was a concert pianist, a wonderful teacher, and he started piano at a very young age. He was enormously talented.”
Herman Godes was a world-renowned Latvian pianist and a Holocaust survivor who spent years as a prisoner within the Buchenwald Nazi focus camp. (West Virginia University)
Herman Godes was finding out in Paris with pianist Robert Casadesus within the late Nineteen Thirties, Godes mentioned, when Adolf Hitler started shifting troops into the Baltic States.
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“Herman needed to return house to be together with his dad and mom as a result of this was a very tense time for all Jewish individuals,” Godes mentioned.
“Very shortly after that, all hell broke loose and the Nazis came into Riga in the middle of the night,” she mentioned. “There was a knock on the door and Herman, his parents and his brother were forced out of their home with just a few belongings. They had beautiful paintings and a marvelous Bechstein grand piano, but the Nazis confiscated all of that.”
“I’m always amazed that they don’t really know that much about [the Holocaust]. But I think the students embrace the knowledge, and embrace my story.”
They had been moved to the Riga Ghetto — the place Herman Godes was separated from his dad and mom and compelled to work underneath very tough circumstances, his spouse mentioned.
On Dec. 8, 1941, Herman’s dad and mom and brother died within the Rumbula bloodbath, through which some 25,000 Jews had been slaughtered in a forest exterior Riga.
“They were forced to dig their own graves, lined up, and they were shot,” Godes mentioned.
She mentioned her late husband was then pressured into a focus camp, the place he met up with a cousin.
“I talk a lot about music history, about form, about harmony,” mentioned Dr. Godes of Tennessee Tech (proven at far proper). “And on occasion, students will ask me about my past and I tell them a little bit about my husband being a Holocaust survivor.” (Tennessee Tech University)
The two pretended to have auto-mechanical abilities with the intention to keep alive.
“Herman would often talk about the fact that he survived because he was young and strong,” Godes mentioned.
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“That’s how he survived — because of his will. He said, ‘You wake up in the morning and your only goal is to get through the day.’ He said, ‘You can survive lice, cold, humiliation, starvation, but you can’t survive the gas chamber or a bullet. So you just do what you have to do.’”
After 4 lengthy years, liberation got here in 1945 — and Herman Godes escaped the camp because the Nazis tried to dispose of as many remaining prisoners as potential, Godes mentioned.
“There’s a lot out there, [including] slavery, and I think we can’t ignore it. We have to face it and we have to know it and understand it as we move forward.”
She mentioned that later, her husband was capable of immigrate to New York City, the place he had household who moved there earlier than the battle, she mentioned.
“He had nothing,” she mentioned. “He quickly learned English and started his career again. He started to practice and everything came back. His career started to take off and he enjoyed this very wonderful life of performing.”
Godes mentioned that right now, she takes any alternative to share her late husband’s story with her college students, each to maintain his reminiscence alive and to do her half in stopping one thing like this from ever occurring once more.
Dr. Godes is proven acting on the piano. Her husband, Herman Godes, was an achieved pianist. She heard him carry out for the primary time in New York City. (Tennessee Tech University)
“I talk a lot about music history, about form, about harmony [in my teachings],” she mentioned. “And on occasion, students will ask me about my past and I tell them a little bit about my husband being a Holocaust survivor.”
She added, “The reaction is always shock. Some [people] are overwhelmed … I’m always amazed that they don’t really know that much about it. But I think the students embrace the knowledge, and embrace my story.”
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Godes mentioned she first heard her husband play a live performance in New York City, the place she was finding out as a younger pianist.
Though there was a greater than 30-year age distinction between them, the 2 fell in love. They shared 35 years of marriage and music with one another.
“Herman lived life to the fullest,” Godes mentioned of her husband. “He was a survivor, and he had this optimism about him. Many of his fellow survivors were still very bitter, but Herman’s attitude was quite different.”
Craig Terry, a scholar of each Herman Godes and Catherine Godes, went on to grow to be an achieved, Grammy Award-winning pianist and director of the Ryan Opera Center at Lyric Opera of Chicago. (Todd Rosenberg)
She added, “He was so grateful to have survived, and he embraced everyone with no grudges. His whole attitude was so healthy and that did a lot for me. I was very blessed to share my life with such a man.”
Together, the couple touched the lives of music college students at Tennessee Tech till Herman Godes died in 2007.
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One of these college students is Craig Terry, a Grammy Award-winning pianist. He is director of the Ryan Opera Center at Lyric Opera of Chicago and studied with the couple starting in 1993.
“I believe that Dr. Godes’ knowledge and experience with the Holocaust brings so much to our students in terms of perspective, understanding and empathy.”
“I’m from a very small town in Tennessee,” Terry advised Fox News Digital. “At that point in my life, I had not traveled very much and they were kind of my windows to the world and to history.”
He added, “‘Schindler’s List,’ I remember, came out maybe my junior year and Herman talked about those experiences. It was quite something for me as a young person who didn’t have much worldwide experience or firsthand experience from people that had been through significant world events and world history. So to hear him talk about that was quite something.”
Terry stayed in contact together with his academics after faculty. To at the present time, he mentioned he considers Catherine Godes a pal.
“Cathy is someone who, once you have a relationship with her, you have it for life, like most great teachers,” Terry mentioned.
Jennifer Shank, dean of the College of Fine Arts at Tennessee Tech University, mentioned that Dr. Catherine Godes “is able to approach musical works in a much richer way.” (Jennifer Shank)
Jennifer Shank, dean of the College of Fine Arts at Tennessee Tech University, mentioned Godes is ready to take her expertise and story and draw parallels to what’s occurring on the earth right now — for the profit of college students.
“She is able to approach musical works in a much richer way, as well as use her knowledge and experiences to help bridge the gap for students that might think of the Holocaust as only history or not contextual,” Shank advised Fox News Digital.
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With antisemitism erupting on faculty campuses right now, Godes mentioned she thinks college students must “go deeper.”
“It’s about awareness,” Godes mentioned.
A college professor, Dr. Catherine Godes (left), is utilizing her platform to coach her college students concerning the ugly elements of historical past, together with the Holocaust, to allow them to perceive and transfer ahead. At proper, her late husband. (Tennessee Tech University/West Virginia University)
“Not being afraid to talk about history, the ugly parts of history … There’s a lot out there, [including] slavery, and I think we can’t ignore it. We have to face it, and we have to know it and understand it as we move forward,” she mentioned.
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As she additionally mentioned in a current episode of Tennessee Tech’s “College Town Talk” podcast, “I believe that children in school need to learn about the Holocaust. They need to learn about antisemitism, about slavery, what is at the root of prejudice against Black people and so on. That is important — and to always remember that we’re all humans. We’re all a part of this world and we all come from different backgrounds.”
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