By Kylie Britt A memorial is a structure that creates a place of memory pertaining to a certain event or group of people. The city of Berlin is a place with a rich history and as the capital of Germany it is home to many national memorials commemorating the country’s past. In one afternoon my […]
By Kaylee De Zalia More than seventy years after the Holocaust, a memorial to the disabled victims of the Holocaust has been erected in Berlin, Germany. At last, they have been publicly acknowledged by the German government. 300,000 innocent souls were slaughtered under the Third Reich. However, somethings were different about these killings. This was […]
By Katie Thomas Memorials are used as tools with which the living can honor the dead. It is important for these places of memory to be connected and incorporated with the event that they are commemorating. That is why I was so disappointed with all but two of the memorials to the Holocaust victims in […]
By Jackie Myers At the end of World War II, Germany was split into four different zones, occupied by America, France, British, and the Soviet Union. The eastern part of Germany was under the complete control of the Soviet Union. Although Berlin was in the center of the Soviet Union’s sphere of influence and it […]
By Elon Clarke Day after day on this trip, the other students and I remark on the sheer number of memorials, cemeteries and monuments to death and murder we have encountered. The usual speech to accompany the opening of a monument entails explanations of how this piece of art commemorates the lost or exalted, however […]
By Michael Kosowski My face was pressed against the glass window of the bus, while I desperately tried to capture my first glimpses of Wawel Hill. My journey to Krakow was one of excitement and anticipation: I eagerly awaited the chance to visit centuries old synagogues and cathedrals. Reaching the city limits, I saw a […]
By Megan Gorenflo When I was thirteen, I traveled with a school group to Dachau, Germany, where we toured the Dachau Concentration Camp. At that age, I had an understanding of what had occurred in this place during the Holocaust, and it merely only affected me a little bit. I recall the somber atmosphere, but […]
By Meagan Edwards Shortly after the end of the Second World War, the former concentration camp of Auschwitz-Birkenau, located in the town of Oswiecim in southern Poland, became the infamous universal symbol for the terrors placed upon the millions of victims, Jewish and non-Jewish, by Nazi Germany throughout the war. The systemic killing of Jews […]
By Kylie Britt As a student learning about the Holocaust, I never envisioned myself actually visiting the site where millions of people lived and died in the concentration camps. I never expected to walk under the haunting Arbeit Macht Frei, “work makes you free” sign to Auschwitz I, or follow the path of a deported […]
By Kaylee De Zalia At first glance, the Galicia Jewish Museum seems small for a museum. As our group filed through the door, the first thing I saw was the café. I could not see any of the exhibits, just the café and the gift shop. I was anticipating our visit, and had a few […]