“A mind that is stretched by a new experience can never go back to its old dimensions. ” -Oliver Wendell Holmes. One day, I was walking around campus with my friend Faith when both of us stumbled upon a sign in the elevator that mentioned a trip to Europe to study our favorite parts of history. From that minute and on both of us knew we had to look into this one of a kind trip. A few days later we attended the course meeting for the trip both of us looked at each other, nodding our heads in excitement. This was when we finally and completely decided this trip would be for us and we would do everything in our power to go.
I was hoping this adventure would show me the people, places, and things that I had heard about in books but also more. I wanted to learn how these civilians learned to survive, how they learned to cope, and what exactly it looked like in that crazy world in their shoes. I can honestly say that this trip met my expectations if not succeeding them. The trip began with me going to my friend Faith’s house so we could travel to the airport together. Both of us were so excited that we could barely stand it. When we arrived we met everyone we would be traveling with and then boarded the plane a few hours later.
Our first stop would be Berlin, Germany all of us could hardly wait much longer. On the first full day we went on a walking tour of Berlin and this overall was in my top five favorite places that we toured. The guide was amazing and extremely informative. I learned all about the buildings that are around the city that have holes and crevices on the sides of them from bullets and bombs exploding in the war but really struck my attention with this was seeing that all of these pieces of history were now involved in everyday life, some being walls to restraunts.
He mentioned the amount of people that were going through starvation. “One sometimes saw a dog’s head and skin in the gutter, people having eaten the dog, either their own or someone else’s. ” (Bos, pg. 35). A few of the memorials really struck my attention. The first being the museum that was in a park like place and had many steps which Hitler had once stood on giving his speech in front of hundreds if not thousands of people.
While another site that caught my eye was the memorial with the woman holding the child and when it rains it would look as if she was crying, under this memorial was a buried Nazi and a person from a concentration camp and they attempted to symbolize a sort of forgiveness. Our next stop would be a place I had been looking forward to going to since | received the itinerary for the trip, Sachsenhausen Concentration camp. Sachsenhausen was a truly surreal place to walk around because with every step I took I could almost feel what had happened there and could picture in my mind the different events that would occur inside those walls.
From the guards forcing the Jews to grab something and if the Jew chose not to they would be punished but if they did they would be shot for passing over the line, to the large place where the Jews would be taken to the “doctor” and they would actually just be shot in the back of head, the showers that would start out as water but turn into a deathly toxic chemical, and lastly the ovens. This sight was overwhelming but I am thankful I was able to experience it and can pass down my education of the topic to others.
After the Concentration camp we went to the Reichstag which was beautiful, especially the view from the top of the building. The guide told us about the many different things that have happened within the Reichstag, starting with they invented their own patented color for the meeting room, the youngest person ever on their Parliament was there and she was nineteen years old, lastly the words written on the walls that was now a hallway, that the Nazis once wrote this and several years after they had done this groups of them would return to he Reichstag to see what they had written so long ago.
Over the next few days we would make our way through the Topography of Terror and the German Resistance museum which both talked about the Nazis and the Gestapo. In the German Resistance museum one thing that really caught my attention was the amount that she talked to us about the man who tried to get rid of Hitler but failed. The Topography of Terror was fairly interesting, this sight was mainly focused on the important of the Gestapo and how the head quarters for them were once located on that property but were blown to pieces.
Thus leading to the museum now being on this land which is also shared with one of the longest pieces of the Berlin wall that is left. The Berlin wall was very intriguing to me because It left such havoc on the society at the time because of the separation between the East and West. The Berlin wall split the two societies for almost twenty years eventually being taken down by the people and it was also blown up in some parts of it. Everyone on the outside of the wall thought life was normal. Most reports in the newspapers, however, portrayed a city in which life appeared to be continuing very much as normal. ” (Moorhouse, pg 13). Next, we would find ourselves at the Wannsee Conference house which is the place that most people know as the place where the Holocaust would be planned but this is in fact not true but rather it is the place that the several page rule book by Hitler was presented to him and his colleagues that would help him carry out the what would now be known as The Holocaust.
The Wannsee Conference house is located on a beautiful property which is quite ironic to me. A movie about the meeting would later be created and is called Conspiracy, this movie helped to put the meeting into perspective for me. Most people think that something as large as the Holocaust would take days if not weeks of continuous planning but the plan was established in a short amount which is why it is so flawed. The movie was set in the house which made it more realistic when we were on the tour of the ouse, I could picture everything that had happened in order. The movie about the Wannsee Conference house and the conference itself is more of psychology behind the ideas and the people in general, this made it more interesting to imagine. Our next adventure would begin in Belgium where we would start our night off with a nice walk to the Menin gate where we would see the nightly ceremony they have held since the 1920’s. It was truly a beautiful ceremony that showed just how much the people of the small city in leper still truly cared for their ancestors.
Over the next few days we would travel to many different World War grave sights and museums. When the war first started the people were not sure what was going on so they would pay close attention to their newspapers and anything that could keep them informed. Children were going to school and finding it to be cancelled for the day but then they would never go back. The civilians of the war began having specific rules placed over them for how they would live their daily lives. These rules ranged from lights hours to regulations on when they could be out and not in their houses. Blackout regulations were issued on the very first morning of the conflict. They stated that all light sources in Berlin were to be extinguish, filtered or shaded during the hours of darkness. ” (Moorhouse, pg. 34).
The Germans began needing forced laborers to work back home since most of the men would be at war and all the women could not do all of the work around the house themselves while also keeping a stable job. The amount of men that would be shipped off to war was a jaw dropping amount. It is truly staggering. The first of more than three million men crossed the soviet border that morning. Every household and every family in Berlin would have known somebody who was there. ” (Moorhouse, pg. 73). The graveyards we walked through would have distinguished gravestones whether it was between religion or how the person died or even both. Gravestones would be placed right next to each other if a limb was found but not the rest of the body as well as if they were all killed right around the same location on the same day.
Some gravestones had certain symbols on the to represent religion, especially if it was out of the ordinary such as being Jewish. Our next and final stop would be to Amsterdam! While on the way to Amsterdam we made a few stops to some of the most historic spots on the way. First, we went to another German military cemetery to see a beautiful statue that was a mother and a father mourning the death of their son, the son was buried right in front of the statue. It was beautiful. The “Trench of Death” would be the next place on our car ride adventure.
This was truly a cool sight being able to walk through the trenches as if we were there. I did not realize the amount of loop holes they had in them it was basically a game of cat mouse because of the way the paths were shaped. The trench also had little covered areas that would be a tunnel like entrance or exit which had a door so if the enemy got in that side they could not make their way into the trenches. We also went to a museum that took us through what it would be like in the trenches as well as what they wore along with the bullets that would have been used.
One room that we walked through was pitch black and it made the sounds of what a face mask back then would have made if they were just bombed and were running to find some sort of cover, which is hard in the trenches since they essentially have no top. I found this terrifying but it really helped me understand what it would have been like. I had been looking forward to this day the whole trip, the day we would go to the Anne Frank house. When I was only in fifth grade I found her diary in the library on my own and read it, this is what struck my interest in the Holocaust at such a young age.
Walking through her house was very surreal because I was imagining the Nazi’s invading the house the whole time we were in the little house. When we would walk up the tiny stair cases it would make a lot of noise and I could only imagine what she had to go through with not moving around much all day because her father’s workers would be downstairs. They hid in their apartment that was behind a large bookcase for a long time with several people. She slept in the same room with an older man and it freaked her out.
Anne began placing different things she cut out and would glue them on the wall in order to make the room look like a happier place. The thought that such a young girl was so afraid of what could happen to herself and her family and had to glue things on the walls to make herself feel better and like everything was as normal as it could be at the time. “I’ve asked myself again and again whether it wouldn’t have been better if we hadn’t gone into hiding, if we were dead now and didn’t have to go through this misery, especially so that others could be spared the burden. But we all shrink from this thought.
We still love live, we haven’t yet forgotten the voice of nature, and we keep hoping, hoping for … everything. ” (Frank, pg. 303). The last museum we would visit is the Dutch Resistance Museum. This was by far one of my favorite museums and I really loved the walking tour. I learned a plethora of stories about the Nazi’s and people in general of this city in Amsterdam. A few of the stories that have stuck with me include the one about the dance studio and how they would turn the music up as loud as they could and then the studio would turn into a place the dancers would learn how to shoot guns in the back yard.
I also remember the story she told us of the little Jewish boy that was loved by everyone including the Nazi’s but since he was Jewish, the Nazi’s had to kill him. The shattered mirror was a really need memorial that helped show everywhere was broken at this point and nothing wasn’t broken. This included the hearts of people and even Heaven. The big tree in the last part of the neighborhood also intrigued me because the lady that lived there would not let anyone take it down for wood because she said it was beautiful and hers but the real reason was because she was hiding several Jews in the window behind it.
I really appreciate the people that could have lost everything in order to help the Jews. This once in a lifetime trip was an amazing journey that I would love to take again. I hope to travel on future Randolph trips. I learned such a large and vast amount of information in two weeks, I never thought | could learn so much in such a little period of time. Whether it was history, life lessons, or becoming more independent overall this trip helped me mature. Learning things through history textbooks is a completely different task than learning the same things going to the actual places and seeing the sights.
It was more heart wrenching. The Holocaust has always been an interesting topic to me and this helped spark my interest further. While I never found myself being excited about learning both WWI and WWIII became very interested after traveling to see the different battle grounds and graveyards. I hope to go back to Europe and explore the history to expand my horizons. “The world is a book, and those who do not travel read only one page. ” – Saint Augustine
