GILLETTE, Wyo. — Eric Muller, the historian who curated the permanent exhibit at the Heart Mountain Interpretive Center, will be honored with the LaDonna Zall Passionate Witness Award at the Heart Mountain Pilgrimage on July 27.
The award is named for the first curator of the Heart Mountain site, LaDonna Zall, who was also a witness to the last train of interned Japanese Americans to depart from Heart Mountain on Nov. 10, 1945. Located between Powell and Cody, the site served as an internment camp for over 14,000 Japanese Americans between 1942 and 1945, with a peak population of 10,767 people placed in the camp at one time.
The Heart Mountain Interpretive Center contains photographs, artifacts and buildings to educate visitors on the realities of Japanese internment and life at the camp. The center works alongside the Heart Mountain Wyoming Foundation, an affiliate of the Smithsonian, to preserve and share the history of the site.
Muller, who has written multiple books on the topic, was responsible for curating the permanent exhibit at the center. A faculty member with the Fellowships at Auschwitz for the study of Professional Ethics, or FASPE, Muller brought a delegation from that organization to Heart Mountain in 2021. FASPE works with young professionals to study the passivity of the professional class in Germany from 1933 to 1945 during the rise of the Nazi regime, according to a press release.
In addition to being a historian and author, Muller is a law professor. Previously a part of the faculty at the University of Wyoming College of Law, he now teaches at the University of North Carolina School of Law as its Dan K. Moore Distinguished Professor in Jurisprudence and Ethics.
For more information about Heart Mountain or this year’s Pilgrimage event, click here.
