By Caroline Simon During World War II, Warsaw was the center of Polish civilization and became “the center of urban resistance to Nazi rule in occupied Europe.”[1] In the summer of 1944, it had the largest uprising the war saw. The uprising did not emerge from thin air, however; there was a long buildup of […]
By Kate Christie You’re a child, living in Poland pre-World War II. For many of you, life was good. Many of you’d wake up every morning, in a home that you and your family shared. You’d, later, leave home for school—“goodbye”, with fleeting kisses to your cheeks. You’d study math, science, and literature. You may […]
By Zoe Fruchter In Poland, the presence of this many synagogues is extraordinary. The majority of synagogues in this country have been destroyed by pogroms, obliterated by bombing in World War II, abandoned and left to crumble in disrepair, or repurposed for other uses now that the large majority of Poland’s Jewish population is gone. […]
By Madison Bollart For the past couple of months I had been looking forward to our trip to Berlin. However, this would not be my first time in the city. A few years ago I visited on my own, not with any intention other than to be a tourist. I had booked the trip knowing […]
By Cesar Gray We live much of our lives enclosed in walls, and for many of us living in free societies, those walls can actually be quite the comfort. I’d go out on a limb and say most of us don’t frequently think about the walls we live in. Many are unassuming structures, and save […]
By Aaron Alonso On our trip to Berlin, Germany we got a more in-depth look at some of the groups of people persecuted in the Third Reich. I was also able to learn more about who was considered as being part of the German “Volk” through information displayed at the Topography of Terror. German residents […]
By Luke Burke My favorite place to go in Wroclaw has quickly become a comedy club right down the street from where our group has been staying because it is a perfect manifestation of the new society post communism. From the invasion of Poland by both Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union in 1939 to […]
By Hannah Gavin Studying the Holocaust is an emotional task. It can be easy to de-personalize what happened during the genocide and reduce it to mere statistics. Throughout my time in Central Europe I have found myself grabbing onto the stories I find that remind me that this six million, were mothers, fathers, sons and daughters. […]
By April Dvorak To enhance my experience of studying and traveling around Central Europe, I have been fortunate enough to take part in an internship at the Wroclaw Pantomime Theatre (Wrocławski Teatr Pantomimy im. Henry Tomaszewskiego.) The theatre is named for its founder Henryk Tomaszewski, who focused on movement and technique to portray a story. […]
By Esmé Rummelhart Artists must make a multitude of choices when designing memorials, and we saw many approaches on display in Berlin. I found the Memorial to the Sinti and Roma Victims of National Socialism (commonly known as the Nazism) to be particularly effective. Designed by Daniel Karavan, this memorial is powerful in its ability […]