By Aren Burnside When examining history, there is often a struggle between remembering people versus remembering facts, especially when it comes to tragedies. I felt this struggle when visiting Auschwitz-Birkenau. Growing up in the United States, my education about World War II and the Holocaust were focused primarily on these facts. We were taught to […]
By Kristen Varganova As we’ve traveled from one country to the next, the number of visits to mass murder remembrance sites increased dramatically. Aside from the painful history, most memorials that we visited on our trips were set alongside breathtaking scenery. From Lety to AuschwitzBirkenau, and the Sinti-Roma Memorial, I couldn’t help but notice the […]
By Abbey Metzler One. I had been in Poland for just over a month, when I suddenly found myself in the Poland I had always read about. Well, it never was called by the name Poland in those stories. It was just a place. Usually a dark place, with endless woods encroaching on the safety […]
By Clare Toner As I entered Auschwitz for the first time, I did my best to hold back tears when we walked through the gas chambers where thousands of Jews were brutally murdered and looked at exhibits holding shoes that were taken from Jews upon their arrival at the camp. It was an emotionally draining […]
By Edward You During my stay in Berlin, the experience in the African Quarter is certainly a unique one. The area’s name is tied to Germany’s colonial past. A rather inconspicuous neighborhood nowadays, there, one finds streets named after German colonies in Africa and infamous German colonizers. This site is much less visited by tourists compare […]
By Anthony Russo Before coming to Europe and seeing all the memorial sites to past atrocities, I thought I had a decent understanding of what had happened during the Nazi and Communist regimes. I knew that it was a time of great injustices against mankind, and that hundreds of thousands of people perished. However, I […]
By Kyra McDermott In today’s recounting of history, Auschwitz-Birkenau is often at the forefront of Holocaust memory as the best-known concentration and extermination camp from this era. However, Auschwitz-Birkenau operated in secret for years during the Holocaust before any action was taken to liberate the prisoners. Those in charge of the camp made many deliberate […]
By Taylor Krzeminski “Herein lies the strength of the Red Army. And herein lies the weakness of the German fascist army.” – Josef Stalin The capital of a former fascist and communist state, a city of destruction and liberation – Berlin occupies a special place in memorial culture. At the Treptower Park Soviet Memorial, historical memorialization […]
By Sarah McLafferty One of the most characteristic aspects of the communist rule in 20th century Central and Eastern Europe was the use of the secret police to keep the population in line with the ideals of the party. The secrecy surrounding the secret police have captivated people’s interests while also evoking a sense of […]
By Rody Conway The 20th century was a century of unprecedented growth, prosperity, and freedom. Conversely, the events of the 20th century set the bar for the scope of human cruelty. While genocide has existed for as long as there have been people, the frequency of large-scale attempts at eliminating entire defined groups of people […]