Written By Deborah Sue-Ho As I walked past barracks where people were housed like animals, buildings which were destroyed to keep in dark secrets, gloomy pictures of people pulled apart from their loved ones, I can only imagine the anguish and pain. Our tour guide painted the picture of the time with gory details as […]
Written By Caroline Bartholomew Throughout its long and tumultuous history, Poland’s borders changed constantly and even disappeared from the map entirely during the 19th century. However, despite numerous occupations and two world wars, Wawel Castle in Krakow remained a concrete symbol of Polish identity. As a foreigner and a student learning about Polish history, visiting […]
Written by Cynthia Wang What could I possibly hope to tell you about Auschwitz-Birkenau that you have not already heard a hundred times over? I have nothing new to add to the discussion about the atrocities of the Holocaust. The combined effort of all the languages in the world falls short in the attempt to […]
By Cate Ferson While looking through the calendar for this program at the beginning of the semester, I felt a mix of excitement and dread when I noticed that we were going to be spending a day at the Auschwitz/Birkenau concentration camp. Those feelings stayed with me until the day we went there. Having studied […]
By Bryan Alicea During the Second World War, Hungary was allied with Nazi Germany. In 1941, Hungary agreed to participate in Operation Barbarossa, a large-scale invasion of the Soviet Union conducted by Germany and its allies. By 1945, the tide of the war had turned against Germany, and the Soviet Union was advancing all over […]
By Diego Franco “Monuments are the grappling irons that bind one generation to another.” – Joseph Joubert Christ the Redeemer (Rio de Janeiro); Michael Jordan (Chicago); Abraham Lincoln (Washington D.C) – The statues a country has on display are synonomous with the ideals and history they want to identify with. Essentially, monuments are artworks that […]
By Leah Killian When visiting places like Auschwitz-Birkenau it is important to remember where you are. Not only are these places historically important sites and museum, but they are also graveyards to the millions of people who died there. This important fact is not something that is easily forgotten unless you have a phone or […]
By Leah Killian Jewish Identity in Central and Eastern Europe is something that has been covered up and erased in the post-WWII era, specifically by the Soviet Union during its dominance over this region. Jewish history is something Europe struggles with as a whole, but it is especially true in Central Europe. In the cities […]
By Deborah Sue-Ho As Central European countries attempt to recover from the events of the Holocaust, several of the governments are challenged with how to remember the events. They erected Holocaust memorials, which we expect to either preserve the memory of the victims and their families and/or to carry a narrative that would discourage anti-Semitic […]