By Mason Burley A tram passes by me as I sit down to write this. Its wheels screech as it barrels down the track, moving hundreds of people as they go about their day. These very tramways and cobblestone streets once were hosts to Nazi soldiers and carriages, and more recently, bore the weight of […]
By Cara Williams At the beginning of last month, I embarked on a semester of remembering pain. Traveling to another country or studying abroad conjured images of a carefree vacation, trying new foods, or learning interesting facts. A semester in Poland, however, is darker – though the country is beautiful and the people are kind, […]
By Sarah Vallejo Tucked away at the end of the Warsaw Rising Museum is a 3D film called City of Ruins that doesn’t quite match the flow of the museum up to that point. Prior to this film, the museum weaves a complex narrative of resistance, death, power, and destruction that made up the 1944 Warsaw […]
By Sarah Mowrer One of the most daunting aspects of traveling to a foreign country is being unable to speak or understand the native language. This obstacle, however, was sidestepped in my education during the travel seminar through Poland due to a powerful tool: translation. The recollection of the diverse identities, cultures, and historical narratives […]
By Ella Roerden Worldwide, regions of all sorts have recognizable symbols they claim as their own. Oftentimes, these symbols are some type of animal or creature. In most cases, these symbols have become sources of pride for the residents of any given place: something to unify behind. Residents tend to feel that these figures represent them […]
By Matthew Piasecki What makes a structure into a monument? Does it become a monument when people celebrate it as a symbol of their culture or accomplishments? Does this happen when someone wants to make a statement, to make people remember some great tragedy or sacrifice? What happens to these monuments when all the builders […]
By Winter Cameron 500,000. That is the approximation of how many Roma or Sinti that were murdered under the Nazi regime. Approximately half a million people, and yet so few know about the history behind the oppression, subjugation and subsequent extermination of the Roma and Sinti. To the general populous, the history and discrimination against […]
By Matthew Piasecki For nearly 230 years, Poland has struggled to be a nation. Ever since the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth was dissolved in 1795 in the third and final partition of Poland, the Polish identity has been defined by a history of struggle and resistance. Whether it was the suppression of Polish culture under Tsarist Russia, the […]
By Katya Kauth On the night of June 10, 1942, in the quaint town of Lidice in what is now the Czech Republic, tragedy struck as Nazis invaded and wreaked havoc upon the town. Anti-fascist resistance had been growing in occupied Bohemia and following the murder of Reinhard Heydrich, Chief of the Reich Security Main Office[1], […]
By Danny Alpers No city in my mind has been more affected by the Cold War than Berlin. While military conflicts within the Cold War came and went, Berlin remained a city divided between East and West by the allies after the defeat of Nazi Germany for more than four decades until November 9th, 1989, […]