By Zoe Fruchter “The everyday phrases are the hardest to change,” says our Polish Language instructor, Łukasz, as he explains to five confused Americans how to introduce ourselves in this new language. If you’ve ever attempted to learn a foreign language, you are already aware of this unofficial linguistic principal. The structures of everyday phrases […]
By Cesar Gray Say, if violence were a product, exchangeable and possessable as any other commodity, then perhaps there are no greater examples of its monopolization than those of the totalitarian regimes of Europe in the 20th century. Each stop along our tour of Central Europe told another tale of a state monopoly on violence […]
Hanz produced a short documentary about Maciej Mandelt, a full-time volunteer at Nomada whose goal is to help immigrants and other minority groups in Wrocław. His concerns about his work are revealed as he tells his history of working with the organization. Click here to watch White and Stupid: Confessions of an activist
By Mia White The Second World War and its atrocities ended over 70 years ago and it is now much harder to find and talk to survivors than only twenty years ago. With the survivors dying and time passing, the lessons of the Holocaust are in the danger of losing their power. With many survivors […]
By Tayla Myree “No matter what government happened to be in power, the country [Germany] won international respect for coming to terms with the Holocaust, while at the same time its colonial past was ignored.” -Daniel Pelz, The DW Germany began its colonial efforts in 1883 during what is known as “The Scramble for Africa”, […]
By Alexander Wilgocki Europe, specifically Central Europe, is full of memorials. Any capital or large city has its own monuments, statues, and plaques, to memorialize the tragedies of each nation’s past. Of all the memorials, the majority of them refer to the conflicts and atrocities of the 20th century. Of these events, the Holocaust is […]
By Raymundo Juarez My professors warned us against it. They said the potential for violence was too great. A moral panic ensued through our classroom. Some of my fellow classmates in Syracuse University’s Exploring Central Europe program and even a professor said they were shifting camp elsewhere for the weekend in order to distance themselves […]
By Autumn McMillan “In America, the color of my skin had stood between myself and me; in Europe, the barrier was down.” -James Baldwin, Nobody Knows My Name (1952) Originally, I had the idea of writing a reflective piece on Black American identity in Europe. I felt the urge to write the piece when I […]
By Jay Skelton As our group traveled around Europe, the most common type of place we visited was a memorial of some kind or another. Most of those we saw were for the victims of Nazi genocide and the Holocaust, although some were dedicated to soldiers and those who fought and died for their country […]
By Meredith Conway I don’t believe our visit to the POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews could have come at a more crucial time. The experience we had at the Warsaw Rising Museum the day prior is partly to blame; it was almost unanimous the museum was overwhelming with too much information and […]