What We Leave Behind—Resilience Through Memory and Memorials with Iris Blas & Gabrielle Zepeda

Have you ever wondered how memorials play a crucial role in communities? What constitutes a memorial, and how does it impact our memory of an event, person, or item? Hello, my name is Iris Bas, and I’m Gabrielle Zepeda. We are graduate students at the UT San Antonio. This Fall 2025, we are working with Dr. Priscilla Martinez in our Theories, Methods, and Uses of Oral History course to produce a season of the Amplifying Identities podcast. For this season, we’re collaborating with Baylor University’s Institute for Oral History, using their extensive archives to explore some of the big historical questions that connect our communities. This episode, titled, “What We Leave Behind—Resilience Through Memory and Memorials,” explores the oral histories of World War II service members Gerd Miller and Ruth St. Claire Murphy, their vastly different roles and experiences during the war, and how their individual memories impact the collective memory of WWII. We also analyze how individual and collective memory can either validate or contradict what monuments represent. Our episode seeks to understand the complications and impact of trauma, power, and nationalism on post-war collective memory as well as address some of the silences.Subscribe to Amplifying Identities wherever you listen to podcast! Follow us on IG @ampidpod for the latest updates! For Further Reading, Listening & ViewingCampbell, D’Ann. “Women in Combat: The World War II Experience in the United States, Great Britain, Germany, and the Soviet Union.” The Journal of Military History 57, no. 2 (1993): 301-323. Accessed on September 22, 2025. Doss, Erika. “War, memory, and the public mediation of affect: The National World War II Memorial and American imperialism.” Memory Studies 1, no. 2 (2008): 227-250. Meredith, William. “Ten- Day Leave.” Poetry: A Magazine of Verse LXIII, no. V (February 1944): 243-244. Miller, Gerd. Oral Memoir. Interviewed by Stephen M. Sloan. July 9, 2013. Texas Liberators of World War II Concentration Camps Project, Baylor University Institute for Oral History. Digital Collections. Transcript.Murphy, Ruth St. Claire. Oral Memoir. Interviewed by Nathan Dale Howard. November 18, 1994. Baylor University Institute for Oral History. Digital Collections. Transcript. National Park Service. “World War II Memorial.” National Park Service. Last modified October 4, 2021. Power, Tom. “Geddy Lee on My Effin’ Life, Rush, and the story of Neil Peart’s audition.” Q with Tom Power. November 16, 2023. Video. https://youtu.be/IMUaFy-bJSs?si=Vpb8RoyDU1WAp9ay.Resnais, Alain, dir. Night and Fog (Nuit et Brouillard). Text by Jean Cayrol. 1955; Paris: Argos Films/Cocinor and Janus Films. HBO Max.Shanken, Andrew M. “Planning Memory: Living Memorials in the United States during World War II.” The Art Bulletin 84, no. 1 (2002): 130-147. Sonstein, Shelli. “Geddy Lee Tells His Family’s Holocaust Story.” Q1043 New York. January 26, 2019. Video. https://youtu.be/hPxwSF4CGyo?si=3gIhpu5Q0RpnqIkM. Trouillot, Michael-Rolph. Silencing the Past: Power and the Production of History. Boston, Mass: Beacon Press, 1995.Winter, Jay. Sites of Memory, Sites of Mourning: The Great War in European Cultural History. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995. Winter, Jay. War Beyond Words: Languages of Remembrance form the Great War to the Present. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2017.