By Sophie Creager-Roberts This semester I participated in courses devoted to studying historic conflict and atrocity and the ways in which it has shaped contemporary socio-political climates and reconciliatory efforts. It is therefore unsurprising, thanks to diligence and expertise of our professors, that I have been able to visit sites such as the International Center for […]
By Capriana Cormier While in Poland, I had been able to visit three impressive castles. Castles are astounding to me; I have always loved them growing up. I have always seen them as magical, whether in fairytales or movies due to the dramatic narrative they have to them, that has always piqued my interest. On the […]
By Ella Farrell On our bus ride to Treblinka, I remember not knowing what to expect. I had never visited a death camp before and didn’t know the specifics about this site. Throughout my secondary education, and even in my Jewish education, we were only taught about Auschwitz-Birkenau and general information about the Holocaust. I […]
By Max Goldberg A week before I was set to arrive in Wrocław, my Grandpa Ted passed away. I was fortunate enough to have spent the final moments of his life alongside him in the very same hospital he had worked in for more than 40 years, in Phoenix, Arizona. His story is incredible. We […]
By Anna Sebree There are no two ways about it: life after war is a trying time. Whether a country “wins” or “loses”, there are bodies left to bury, buildings to brush up, and traumas to bear. Scars are left on a country and collective memory that may never fully heal. Whether the ends justify the […]
By Connor Arneson Throughout our travels in Poland, we just can’t seem to escape the current government’s war on history. For the last 6 years, Poland’s government has been relentless in its attempts to whitewash Poland’s past, and, for the last 6 years, historians have been relentless in their attempts to combat the government’s misinformation. The […]
By Sophie Creager-Roberts On November 12, 1989 –three days after the fall of the Berlin Wall– German Chancellor Helmut Kohl and the first freely elected Polish Prime Minister, Tadeusz Mazowiecki, embraced in the courtyard of the former von Moltke family estate. This site in Lower Silesia is where German dissidents founded the Nazi resistance movement called […]
By Harrison Vogt The tale of an industry entering a town, extracting all its resources, and leaving with a permanent scar on its region is a narrative found across the globe. Mining practices may remove whole mountain tops to extract finite resources. Mass-scale farming pollutes the local environment with pesticides and animal waste in local water […]
By Capriana Cormier When people learn about the Holocaust, they learn about Auschwitz I and Auschwitz II – Birkenau. This history dominates what we know about the Holocaust and leaves other concentration and extermination camps invisible to the rest of the world. After our two-week traveling seminar, I had a lot to think about. I […]
By Anna Sebree Poland is a beautiful and complicated country. It is a country that boasts intellects, artists, and revolutionaries, while simultaneously emitting a cold chill of emptiness that seeps through the abandoned synagogues, former ghettos, and camp memorials. There is an insurmountable feeling of loss that cannot be shaken as the country grapples with […]