Latin School of Chicago

LM: Ingrid, tell us how the class began. DF: I came to Latin in January of 1978; I replaced someone who left. For the following fall, I had the ability to propose a class. at was exciting to me, and I proposed e Nazi Mind, which was a combination of my historical and psychology interests. LM: How did you come up with the idea? DF: It was a combination of things. I saw that students here were interested in the Nazi era, so it was partly a response to student interest. e Nazi era was personally very interesting to me. I was born in post-war Germany, so my own family history intersects with what I ended up teaching. But in particular, I was interested in developing a class that applied psychology principles to historical analysis. LM: What was the biggest challenge in teaching the class in the '70s? DF: Finding resources was extraordinarily dicult. In those early years, the students had to go to the public library – what is now the Chicago Cultural Center – or the Spertus Institute and request trial transcripts. e students sometimes had to wait hours for particular volumes of the transcripts to be brought to them from the archives, and all research had to be done there because the libraries would not let us photocopy the materials due to their fragility. Later on, we purchased a set of transcripts and another set was donated to us. at helped tremendously because students did not have to go o-site and their time could be better spent doing research rather than waiting for materials to be brought to them. LM: How did technology change access to materials? DF: Oh, it was a dramatic shift. Now, the two main sources – the 34 bound volumes that make up the prosecutor transcripts – are online. Also, there is a wealth of ancillary materials, such as, newspaper articles that were referenced in a trial or video footage from that era. We also now have secondary sources that explain and put some of the primary sources in context. I would say 90 percent of the research is done online and is transportable. e research can be done anywhere, anytime. LM: Did technology change how you taught the class? DF: What changed was not so much how [Dave Fript and I] taught the class but the degree to which students could go in-depth with their research. How much we could expect students to do and how much they could process changed tremendously, due to easier access to materials. LM: Talk to us about using courtrooms at the Daley Center for the simulation starting around 1988-1989. DF: Shifting the venue to the Daley Center was tremendously important to making it feel less like just a class. It kicked it up a notch. Every student was willing to contribute more. e father of one of my students was a judge there, and he oered us his courtroom. Moving to the Daley Center also enabled us to have an audience. Now we sometimes have 200 people – not all at the same time – who come to see the trials. We really had no place big enough to hold that many people on campus, except maybe the theater, but that made it seem more like a play rather than a trial. LM: Have the students changed much in 40 years? DF: In many ways, I see more continuity than change. e students' intensity in the courtroom and willingness to engage is similar, but their investment is even greater than it was back then. Student performance is better now, primarily because it's grounded more solidly in research and because Dave Fript has continued to rene elements of the trial simulation. LM: You got to meet Elie Wiesel, author of Night and a Holocaust survivor, when he came to speak at Latin in 1999 for the 20th anniversary of the class. What was that like? DF: at's kind of a funny story. We went to pick him up from O'Hare and got into a horrible trac jam on the way back to school. We talked with him for two hours in the car. He was very authentic, very dynamic and had no pretense whatsoever. His outlook was very optimistic, despite what he'd been through. It was remarkable to hear him and have such personal access to him. LM:Why do think this class is still important and has withstood the test of time? DF: e issues raised by the Nazi era and trial simulation continue to be relevant. We are still grappling with racism. e need to understand the dynamics of genocide and genocide prevention is as compelling as ever if we want to make "Never Again" a reality. It's also important for students to understand the connection between Nuremberg and the International Criminal Court's responsibility to bring to trial contemporary violators of international human rights law. INGRID DORER FITZPATRICK A LOOK BACK WITH To hear Dorer Fitzpatrick's personal anecdotes from working on nearly 40 Nuremberg Trials at Latin, as well as historical photos and videos of the simulations, visit www.latinschool.org/latinmagazine. L M » W 25

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