HOLLIS – Erik Nadeau, of Hollis, was recently honored with the publication of “The Wannsee Conference” in The Concord Review, an international journal that publishes the exemplary history research papers of high school students.

“High school athletes are the pride of their communities,” TCR editor William Fitzhugh said in “Why Are We Afraid to Show Off Our Brightest Students?” in The Atlantic, September 2012.

“But if we want to inspire kids to write well, we should be putting our best young scholars on display.”

Since 1987, TCR has published works from student authors in 46 states and 39 other countries. Receiving an average of 400 papers for each quarterly issue, TCR publishes only about 3 percent of all submissions.

Nadeau’s paper appears with those of 10 other students from China to Switzerland in the spring issue.

Nadeau’s interest in historical research was sparked while visiting Gettysburg, Pa., in 2009. Touring the battlefield inspired him to write “The Ideals of the Gettysburg Address,” which won the Daughters of the American Revolution essay contest through the Anna Keyes Powers Chapter and was the New Hampshire state winner.

Nadeau’s research examines the motivations and rationalizations of the learned men who orchestrated the Holocaust, specifically while attending the Wannsee Conference on Jan. 20, 1942.

“With unanimous agreement, the Conference initiated the systemization and organization of a solution in a society that viewed the ideology of anti-Semitism as reality in Nazi Germany,” Nadeau wrote. “By managing logistics and office rivalries, hiding behind legalities, and dehumanizing the Jews, each Wannsee Conference attendee rationalized anti-Semitism to work effectively and efficiently toward Hitler’s Final Solution.”

Nadeau is a 2014 cum laude graduate of Groton School in Massachusetts, where he designed and launched the Groton Green Zebra Campaign for environmental sustainability awareness and was awarded the New England Science Teachers Prize sponsored by MIT for applying and promoting science and technology throughout his community.

Nadeau was on the Groton School debate and crew teams, plays baseball and soccer, and performs as a jazz drummer. He cofounded the Student Sustainable Energy Team and serves on the board of directors of Sustainable Legacy, a New Hampshire nonprofit corporation dedicated to promoting an understanding of sustainable living and facilitating educational opportunities involving sustainable energy concepts, technologies and innovations (www.sset-global.org).

As a member of the Class of 2018 at the University of Chicago, Nadeau will study environmental science and economics.

Copies of the The Concord Review spring issue, Volume 24, Issue 3, are available through Amazon or www.tcr.org/tcr/
bookstore.html.