Plater Robinson Bio

Plater Robinson

Holocaust Education Specialist
Southern Institute for Education and Research

Plater Robinson, the Institute’s Education Specialist, is an award-winning public radio journalist and a dynamic public speaker. He has crafted a number of original multimedia presentations, ranging from “Holocaust Education in David Duke Country” presented at the Park Avenue Synagogue in New York to “A Tale of Two Towns: Oleszyce, Poland—Sumner, Mississippi” presented at the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute.

Plater Robinson was born in New Orleans in 1956. He graduated with honors from Woodberry Forest School and Washington and Lee University, both in Virginia. After teaching Spanish language and European history at St. James School in western Maryland, Mr. Robinson lived for a year in Sevilla, Spain, where he taught European history at Columbus College. He obtained a Master’s Degree in European history at Louisiana State University, writing his thesis on Nazi Germany’s participation in the Spanish Civil War. He then embarked on a career in public radio. From 1987 to 1990, as a freelance journalist, he lived in Madrid, Berlin, Prague, and Warsaw, and produced stories tied to events that occurred before and during the Second World War. Mr. Robinson’s stories aired on National Public Radio, Christian-Science Monitor Radio, and Pacifica Network News. In 1990 Mr. Robinson began to cover politics in the Deep South. In 1992 he won National Headliner, National Community Broadcaster, and New Orleans Press Club awards for his reporting on David Duke. In 1993 he won a New Orleans Press Club award for his documentary on the Houma Indians. That same year his story on the 50th anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising was judged one of the year’s best by the Association of Independent Reporters.

Mr. Robinson conducts workshops for high school teachers on the Holocaust and, separately, on the history of civil rights in America. The information that Mr. Robinson gathered first-hand comprises the substance of his workshops and presentations. “Mr. Robinson’s presentation is like a perfectly orchestrated symphony,” said one teacher. “The lights went down and he seemed to enter and become the stories he shared,” said another. “It was wonderful to behold.” He has also organized countless school and community presentations, featuring Holocaust survivors who live in the Deep South.

At present, Mr. Robinson is writing a book about his experiences in Europe in search of the remnants of the destroyed Jewish world.

Presentations:

  • “Eva and Henry: A Small Town in Poland”
  • “Campo di Fiori: Carousel Outside the Warsaw Ghetto”
  • “America and the Holocaust”
  • “Anschluss: An Orgy of Sadism”
  • “A Tale of Two Towns: Oleszyce, Poland—Sumner, Mississippi”
  • “Emmett Till: Mississippi Lynching”
  • “Whiter Than You”