By Katie Thomas Recently, we have been discussing the differences between memory and history as two distinctly different concepts. Memory holds personal meaning, whereas history is focused in academia and studies. One way to think of these phenomena is memory is discussing the past through personal experiences around a fire, whereas history is read about. […]
By Elon Clarke Begun as a space for the general public of Germany to meet and gather together under a monument of victory over Napoleon, Centennial Hall in Wroclaw is a space with a rich history, famous present and inspirational future. Centennial Hall is a kind of mega-community center that Wroclavians are proud of and […]
By Jacquelyn Myers From around the world people have come to visit both Auschwitz and Birkenau. Traveling through both camps is an eye opening experience. When people think about the Holocaust most associate it with the Jewish victims, but the Jews were not the only victims. You grow up learning about what happened to start […]
By: Kara McGrane The Holocaust was a specific, disquieting event in history, an unexpected rupture in humanity, yet it has become a trope for other genocides since its occurrence. The Shoah is universal because of the sweeping reach of not only its victims but also because it has penetrated popular culture through its over-simplification as […]
By: Kara McGrane In most cases, a memorial is erected to commemorate an important event in history that a country would like to remember and to create a sense of pride in the country’s history. Such cannot be said for a majority of World War II memorials, in particular, many of the places of remembrance […]
By: Megan Newell The comfortable little gem of a city known as Wroclaw is not only our home for the time being, it is, and continues to be, a place of persistent issues of awareness and integration of the past. As a city who has swung like a pendulum back and forth between German and […]
By: Megan Newell While walking the grounds of Auschwitz-Birkenau, our tour guide recited a simple, yet powerful, quote that has had me lost in thought ever since: the quote reads, “One death is a tragedy, one million is a statistic”. This quote, taken at face value, seems true, in a way. Its truth lies in […]
By: Jake “Andy” Fabrizio Historical injustices do not go unnoticed. The truth, no matter how suppressed or malformed, will eventually come out. Proper commemoration, however, does not lie necessarily within the very presence of truth but within the acts of acknowledging and effectively disseminating the truth. The first step is acknowledgement because if the past […]
By: Jake “Andy” Fabrizio In the days leading up to our study tour of Auschwitz-Birkenau, I was filled with a unique type of apprehension. What I was anxious for, I could not quite put my finger on; though I had been excited for almost all of our excursions, I knew that there was going to […]
By: Madeline Diorio Three months after walking around foreign cities, visiting museums, climbing towers and terraces, visiting monuments and museums and the most striking of all I find to be the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe in Berlin, Germany. Driving through Berlin it seemed impossible that one would not be able to look […]