The Latvian Center Garezers : The Culmination of Personal Experiences and Building of Community Among the Latvian Diaspora
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Authors
Ejups, Sarma
Issue Date
2023-01-01
Type
Thesis
Language
en_US
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Abstract
My interest in researching Garezers comes from a deeply-rooted personal attachment to the camp. Both of my parents graduated from GVV, my mother went on to teach Latvian art history and Latvian history at the camp, and my father became the organization's president 8 years ago. Although my family is from Chicago, I was raised in Three Rivers, Michigan over the summers. I was a part of the preschool program, elementary school program, middle school program, and graduated from the high school program in the summer of 2018. Garezers has facilitated the growth of my own generation of Latvian Americans. I have established friendships that will last a lifetime. My American high school and college friends will come and go, but my Latvian American friendships will always remain. In order to fully understand the different generational experiences and the development of personal connections to the camp, I collected oral histories and other primary sources from the camp to learn how a cultural establishment like this has maintained its original purpose for so long. I created a very strategic set of interview questions designed to discover any similarities in personal experiences regarding Garezers. I reached out to the broader Latvian American community and asked if people would be interested in participating in my project. My choice in interviewees was less from the generation that built Garezers- their purpose for establishing Garezers is self evident as I will explain later, but rather the subsequent generations that reaped the benefits of the founders mission. The first half of this project is my research of the history of Latvians in America, specifically Michigan, post World War II. The second half of this project is a compilation of primary sources and oral histories. Garezers was designed to maintain a Latvian national identity outside of the physical bounds of the European country itself and has continued to do so for 58 years. The Latvian Center Garezers is a place where Latvian Americans come to spend time together as a community in America.
Description
ii, 54 p.
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