Day 19

Yesterday, we boarded an outbound train. When we got off just a few stops later, we were in a beautiful suburban town based around a lake, Wannsee. It was a surprising place for us to visit. What could there possibly be to visit and study here, in this peaceful town on a lake? 

Well, no part of Germany was left untouched by the Nazis. Here in Wannsee, the party took over a home on the lake. They used it as a guest house of sorts for their out of town guests. It was beautiful and private, but still just a few stops on the train from Berlin. Here, some of the high ranking Nazi party members held a meeting to discuss the "final solution to the Jewish question". It seems that every place where some sort of evil was thought up or took place has a surreal sort of beauty as well. Maybe it's a balance for the ugliness that transpired there, but more likely it's a beautiful place simply made uglier by its past. 

 After our workshop here with a lovely instructor, he brought us a few train stops closer to the city. Here, he showed us the station where most of Berlin's Jewish citizens were deported to concentration and death camps. It's dotted with memorials, but I was most deeply moved by the preservation of the train tracks itself. Along the sides of the platform, dates, numbers of people and destinations are recorded. Nothing could make it feel more real than standing at the last spot most of the people persecuted saw of their home, Berlin, and staring at those numbers. 

After those heavy moments on Platform 17, we boarded our train back into the city and switched gears quite a bit. 

Professor Bormann's friend, the same who had the entire group over for a welcome party to Berlin, works at the Reichstag. He gave us a fantastic private tour of the German Parliament as the sun set. 

We then said goodnight to Berlin and made our way home. 

Today, we had another fantastic seminar at the Anne Frank Center of Berlin. Of course the Franks never lived in Berlin, moving from Frankfurt to Amsterdam when Anne was just four, but I was pleased to see the Anne Frank Center in the old Jewish neighborhood of Berlin. Our group leader was named Joscha, a student whom we were closer in age with than any other guide we've had before. The exhibit itself was fantastic, but I felt as if the most valuable part of the experience was speaking with Joscha, who was born in 1990, the year of reunification of Berlin. We might've asked very forward questions, but our curiosity about the perspective of our generation on the Holocaust was apparent and he told us quite openly about his sort of guilty feelings toward this time period. Of course this sentiment is not easily explained, he told us, because his generation and he personally had nothing to do with the Holocaust, and yet he told us of his need to spend a year in Israel volunteering with Holocaust survivors and  his work at the Center also spoke to this feeling. Joscha made it clear that he is not the average German student, and that many of his generation are simply fed up with being blamed for something that happened decades before their birth. I was just very happy to be given the opportunity to speak with someone of relatively the same age as myself, who has grown up here and experiences on a daily basis how the Holocaust still affects Germany and young people.

After the seminar, we were finished with our programming for Berlin. Erin, Jameson and I spent a little time walking around the old Jewish neighborhood, which Jameson and I had seen once before but Erin had unfortunately missed. It's beautiful, but everywhere you turn you can see gaps in history, places where people's lives were uprooted and not allowed to run their course. 

We spent the rest of the afternoon resting while Jameson headed to her museums. Tomorrow we will move on to Poland, which will certainly introduce a whole new set of topics to our studies. In preparation, we caught up on laundry, essay writing, and reading following our last dinner in our lovely Berlin neighborhood. Auf wiedersehen, Berlin, see you in eleven days. 

Day 17

Ravensbrüeck women's concentration camp is one hour from Berlin by train, a half hour walk from the station, and a total time warp for the few who visit. 

The camp was dedicated primarily to female prisoners, which prompted interesting gender topics on top of the recurring themes of violence and human nature that we discuss at other sites. The initial reaction I had when walking up to the camp was shock. We were greeted by a sight that surprised even our professors, who are experienced with such places. The former homes of SS officers remain standing, empty, abandoned, and haunting the camp. 

You can walk right up, walk inside even. It's terrifying and fascinating at the same time. It's a money issue, of course, the politics of concentration camp budgets has not yet addressed this problem. And it is a problem, the houses don't belong to the camp, and the state has not torn them down. Ravensbrüeck brought up a lot of interesting feelings, as it was a women's camp with a lot of personal items on display, but this is what got to me most. These houses are an interesting statement on the bizarre way Germany remembers, or fails to remember.

Today we visited Sachsenhausen, another emotionally exhausting site. I could write a million things about the day, but one of the most important things I've observed during our time in Berlin is the behavior of others at memorial sites. Today we observed a group of teenagers running around loudly and disrespectfully, kicking themselves off the wall of a room that once held the corpses of murdered prisoners. Our entire group was really upset by this, and thankfully our guide, Greta, reprimanded them appropriately. Another incident was when we noticed a couple of people taking selfies of themselves standing on the memorial to the murdered Jews of Europe in Berlin, a really touching site. We've had many discussions about how we can not let these things affect us and alter our experiences, yet I think it's important to acknowledge that it does affect how I perceive each place. It almost makes me feel protective of it and the people it represents. In this way, I'm learning about my own coping mechanisms with difficult subject matter.

After two concentration camps in two days, tomorrow's workshop on the Final Solution will provide much needed emotional distance. What a weird sentence, and what a twisted realm of history I'm currently inhabiting on a daily basis. 

The memorial site placed at Ravensbrüeck by the Soviets in the sixties looks out onto the lake directly bordering the crematorium. The lake was supposedly used to dump ashes. 

Day 13

The lack of WiFi in Nuremberg seriously limited posting, but disconnecting to an even higher extent was alright with me. 

We've now moved onto Berlin, a beautiful city with a size that I simply cannot comprehend. Last night we were lucky enough to get an introduction to Berlin through Professor Bormann's friend in the city, who had the group over to enjoy his rooftop and tell us a little about the city. 

Today, we were lucky enough to have bikes at our disposal ALL DAY. It was the best way we could've seen the city, really fun, efficient, and much safer than biking in any American city. We toured some of Berlin's history as a group in the mornig.

Afterwards, the three of us grabbed some really cheap and really delicious Turkish food for lunch. Thankfully Berlin should be a little break for our wallets, counterintuitive but absolutely evident so far. 

After our group activities we took off for the flea market that we'd heard about, where we found some really cool art and antique-y things. Jameson then headed for a museum, so Erin and I took full advantage of our bikes for the rest of the day. 

So far, I'm loving Berlin.

Day 9

We made it to Nuremberg! There's a rail strike and wifi is elusive, but c'est la vie. 

We arrived around 1:30 to the beautiful city. Today was our intro to Nuremberg, and a lovely local showed us around and gave us the medieval history of the walled city. It's quite different from Munich, full of hills and small alleyways. 

Our hotel is located in a really nice residential neighborhood, and it's just a short walk up the hill, over the moat and through the castle down to the city. 

There's a small river running through the city, and it makes the city both extremely walkable and picturesque. 

Tomorrow we begin our workshops at the Palace of Justice, where we will have the privilege of speaking to some very important people here in Nuremberg. 

Although the original plan was to speak to a survivor in Munich, because he had to cancel we now will be speaking with a Sinti woman who survived Auschwitz as a child. It will be difficult to hear, but it's time to start dealing with the even heavier material before we make our way to Poland. 

So far, I'm impressed with Nuremberg. 

Day 8

Today was our last day in Munich, which was as bittersweet as I expected. Munich was the best way we could've started our studies, both chronologically for the time period we're studying and, for lack of a better phrase, "easing" ourselves into the subject at hand.

I didn't take many pictures today, so here's the one that I did take for those who only look at the pictures. (Trevor.)

Our academics today were focused around the National Socialism Documentation Center, which just opened at the beginning of the month. During our time here, I've found myself criticizing the lack of memorials and remembrance at important sites around the city. This new center is built on the old seat of the Nazi Party, in the place of the perpetrators. It's an important step forward for Munich, yet the fact that it's brand new in town is significant, and just about says it all. 

I thought the center was extremely well done, putting into context and uniting everything we have learned thus far in one sequential exhibit. It was a good way to end our time in Munich, and left me with a more positive outlook on the possibility of increasing the dialogue on and recognition of the National Socialist regime. 

Afterwards museum expert Jameson took us to one of the SEVEN she visited on Sunday when Erin and I were in Austria. This modern art museum and the countless others in the same area helped to remind me, once again, that Munich is still a cultural center with many components and motivations. Sometimes I could only look at the city and see the violent past it harbored, as I did on Saturday night when we went to an outdoor conert in Odeonsplatz, the site of a former memorial to those who died in Hitler's failed coup d'etat. Again, I think it's important to set aside my lense as an American and a student of genocide studies in order to examine how the past manifests itself in day to day life here, as that's also important to our studies. 

Tomorrow we head to Nuremberg, despite a rail strike that has forced us to switch trains. I'm curious to be able to compare the two cities, with Munich as the origin and Nuremberg as the attempt at justice.

Day 7

The sun was out in full force today, and I broke out the sunscreen happily. 

We met in the Poet's Garden this morning, which was the location of a Nazi exhibit making fun of "degenerate" art, including modern and expressionist pieces. Hitler had deemed these pieces unfit for his empire, and many were sold or destroyed. We then walked over to the Museum der Kunst, where Hitler displayed German art. We talked a lot about architecture and the role it played as propaganda for the Third Reich. Hitler was such a bitter little man for having been rejected based on his artistic skills. 

Overall it was a very interesting day, which I'm glad to have experienced despite the fact that it was a back-up plan after the survivor we were supposed to speak with at Dachau had to cancel for health reasons. Unfortunately, this is common given the aging population of those who survived. Hopefully we will have an opportunity to speak with a survivor in Berlin or even Poland. 

We finished quite early, so the girls and I grabbed sandwiches and headed to the English Garden, the largest park in Munich. It was an amazing space, and we only skirted the edge. We sat along a river and watched the infamous Munich urban surfer dudes (and girls!) doing their thing in a naturally-created wave in the middle of the city. Das ist cool. 

Day 6

Today was yet another change of pace. We had the day completely off from academics, so a bunch of us decided to hop a train to Austria. That's the kind of thing you can do with amazing infrastructure, which America should certainly take note of. The best part? It was €10 round-trip.

After around an hour and a half ride, we arrived in Salzburg, the home of Mozart and the Von Trapp family from the Sound of Music. 

We started off our time in Salzburg with a visit to good old Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's houses. The museum was really cool, with some of his original composition notebooks and instruments. 

Mozart also didn't have a bad view out his back window:

After that, we moved on to the garden where the Sound of Music "Doe, A Deer" scene was filmed. Of course I sang the whole time, I couldn't resist. 

On that side of the river, we also ran into a little piece of home that I was incredibly amused by. 

Finally, we wandered back over the river and walked around some of the older parts of the ancient city.

We finished our day in Austria with a bit of a climb. There's just something about old kings and wanting their castles on the actual tops of mountains. It was worth every step, though.

We then walked back along the Salzach River to catch our train, and were back in Munich by 9:00. Today was yet another beautiful day.