Student Profile:
T. Fielder Valone, '11
Published: Winter 2010
Personal Experience Inspires Student
to
Explore Testimonies of Victims
In 1998, at age 10, T. Fielder Valone, Jr. was
on a family trip that changed his life forever.
While visiting Belize, the family decided to take a
quick trip into neighboring Guatemala, despite the
political unrest in that country at the time. The
sightseeing trip took an unpleasant turn, when
their van was surrounded on a remote mountain
road and the family was held at gunpoint. Their
dramatic escape, made while driving in reverse
down the twisty, narrow road, introduced Valone
to the feeling of terror and the experience of
being a victim.
Nearly 10 years later, while doing late-night
research for his Holocaust course with Professor
Christopher Browning, Valone suddenly connected
with the reports of other victims, who realized
terror as a constant reality, not just for a few
minutes while traveling.
“I suddenly understood the wider implications
of facing terror, of being a victim,” said Valone. “As I worked on my paper for the Holocaust course,
I developed an intellectual passion to really delve
into the subject.”
Valone, a History and American Studies major,
is the first recipient of the Elsie Kaplan “Mother
Shapiro” ZBT Undergraduate Research and Travel
grant in Jewish Studies. He used the funding to
help cover expenses for a month-long research trip
in New York City this past July. There, he averaged
six hours a day examining eyewitness testimonies
of Lithuanian-Jewish survivors of genocide,
collected immediately after World War II and now
archived at YIVO Institute for Jewish Research.
As an interesting twist, he was only able to
pursue his research project because Professor
Jonathan Boyarin, associate director of the Center,
had translated the documents from Yiddish to
English a few years ago. There are 2,000 pages
of handwritten testimonies in total, but Valone
decided to focus on those from three rural counties
on what was then the Lithuanian-German border. The testimonials were recorded by a Holocaust
survivor who visited displaced person campus
between 1946 and 1948.
“The records are very detailed and organized,
exploring pre-war and post-war life in addition to
the victims’ experiences during the war years,”
explained Valone. “A couple weeks after starting
work, I was able to meet with Professor Boyarin
and really talk through everything I was learning
about. It was difficult to get through the testimonials,
the accounts were very brutal, they told about
neighbor against neighbor, and it was large scale.
I really couldn’t chat about it with friends.”
Back in Chapel Hill for his last year, he is busy
turning his numerous legal pads worth of notes
and hundreds of pages of photocopies into his
senior honors thesis.
“This fall, I have about 3,000 pages of additional
background reading to do, and then I need to finish
the first draft of my paper by January,” Valone
explained. “I figure this project is good practice
for graduate school, to see if I really enjoy doing
sustained intellectual research and to see if
writing a dissertation is something I’d like to do.”
Valone serves as the student representative
on the Center’s Advisory Board this year. After
graduation this May, he plans to pursue a Ph.D. in
Modern German History and further his research
efforts after taking a year off. He is hoping to
spend his gap year in Germany, doing the mirror
image of his senior thesis research—reviewing
the testimonials of war criminals who were in
Lithuania.
Photo: Fielder Valone, at right in dark jacket, presents his research findings to the Center's Board of Advisors.
