About the project

In 2016, the Texas Holocaust and Genocide Commission approached Texas Tech University with the task of creating an educational tool by which students across Texas would be familiarized with the liberation of the concentration camps in the European Theater of War during the Second World War. The commission provided access to the Institute for Oral History at Baylor University’s collected oral histories of Texans who were veterans of the Second World War and who played a role in the liberation of concentration camps across Europe.  Using these testimonials, the team at Texas Tech University developed a digital app to help share the stories of the Texas Liberators with high school students across the state. Texas Tech created a narrative by which students could come to understand the extremes of savagery and fanaticism, humility and humanity of the Second World War from the perspective of the American soldier.

The Texas Liberator Project includes the app, this website, a large format, display quality book featuring the narratives of 21 of the Texas liberators, and an exhibit at the Museum of Texas Tech University.  Led by Dr. Aliza Wong, Associate Dean of the Honors College, and faculty mentors Mr. Jiawei Gong, Mr. Christian Pongratz, Dr. Robert Peaslee, and Dr. Randy Reddick, teams of Texas Tech University undergraduate and graduate students took on the gargantuan task of honoring the men and women who sacrificed so much to ensure the liberation, survival, and memory of the Holocaust.