WWII links student, professor in Licking County, Ohio The Columbus Dispatch, Sunday, March 9th GRANVILLE, Ohio — Eva Revesz, a visiting assistant professor at Denison University, settled in to an evening of grading papers as she had so many evenings before. The assignment was a short, getting-to-know-you, in-class paper. But it turned out to be one that neither she nor her student Samantha Seibel will ever forget. It was the second day of the new academic year, and Revesz had asked her class of 20 or so freshmen to answer a few questions: What are your interests on campus? Why are you taking this class? How would you assess your writing ability? She was teaching a first-year seminar course, a Denison requirement that offers a wide variety of topics intended to teach new students to listen, learn, research and write. The topic was “ Genocide in the 20th Century.” Revesz skimmed through the first few papers and reached for another. “Hello,” it said at the top. “My name is Sammy Seibel, and I am from a small town in northwestern Ohio called Defiance. She couldn’t yet put a face to the name. She continued reading. “I chose this course because my grandfather Col. Richard Seibel fought in World War II and liberated Mauthausen concentration camp.” Revesz stopped. Life just halted, if only for a nanosecond. It couldn’t be. She reread the line. “I was like, ‘Wow!’” she recalled last week. She had to call her father. Andrew Reeves, who is nearly 90 years old and a retired professor, lives in Grosse Pointe, Mich., where he’d raised his family since the mid-1950s. His life, however, was shaped before his arrival on U.S. soil — in a Nazi concentration camp in Mauthausen, Austria. “Dad, you’ll never believe this,” Revesz said. She told him about her class and about this kid — Sammy, whoever she was — and her paper. “My father’s reaction was like, ‘Very interesting. What do you know, what do you know?’ ... I was more excited than he was. At this point in his life, he kind of stands above it. He’s become very complacent. I was kind of disappointed.” But she’d grown accustomed to his behavior toward his days in the labor camps. He tells the stories of his liberation, mostly the good stories, Revesz said. Not so much about the starvation, the death marches, the lice so thick his clothes moved like an agitated ant hill; or the family he lost, including his favorite cousin, Ava, for whom he named his first daughter. Reeves, who couldn’t be reached for this story, is now “American through and through,” his daughter said. He changed his name to Reeves to be more American. (She changed hers back to embrace her Hungarian ancestry. He thought she was silly.) Two days later, the class met again. Which one was Sammy? Revesz began discussing the reading she’d assigned. She asked the class a question. A young woman raised her hand and identified herself, as requested. Sammy. Revesz acknowledged Sammy’s answer and then said, “Oh, and by the way. I have something to tell you.” “My initial reaction was, ‘Uh-oh.’ I thought, ‘Did I do something wrong?’” Seibel said. Her professor then explained that her father had been a prisoner — a survivor — at Mauthausen. “It was exciting and dramatic and awkward, too,” Seibel said. “All of a sudden, all the attention was on me. I didn’t know what to do.” When she got home, she immediately contacted her dad. “I Skyped him. He was sitting on his bed with his laptop. I remember telling him, and his reaction was pretty much the same as mine. His eyes widened, and his jaw dropped. He was just like, ‘No way!’” Seibel’s grandfather died when she was 4 years old. But she has heard the stories her whole life, read the articles, seen the video of her famous grandfather Col. Richard Seibel online. “It’s almost like he’s alive, the stories are so vivid,” she said. “And it was so exciting to tell my dad because he’s so proud of his dad. It’s just so interesting that, all these years later, I am still a witness to that legacy.” The coincidence that Seibel and Revesz would breach the miles and the decades to intersect on a college campus in a Licking County village “is just unthinkable,” Seibel said. “I’m amazed by it all, and it’s pretty cool.” “The world got much smaller,” Revesz said dispatch/content/stories/local/2014/03/09/wwii-links-student-professor.html#
Posted on: Sun, 09 Mar 2014 15:41:58 +0000
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