Today we spent in Brandenburg, touring through this mid-sized city and learning about the euthanasia program the National Socialists started there just a couple months after the war started. Christian Marx was our guide the entire day. We visited and learned about one of the city’s very old churches (St. Catherine’s – going to back to the 14th century), some important local resistance, and the moral capitulation of many doctors, nurses, and administrators. (Nearly10,000 men, women, and children were killed by CO2 gas in about 9 months of time. This was the first place to design and employ gas as a means of death. The extermination camps of Poland lay in the future, but only a few months away. Both technique and personnel connect the euthanasia project in Germany with the extermination camps in Poland.)

The experience was anchored in an investigation of courtroom and discovery testimonies made by doctors and nurses invited into the Aktion T4 euthanasia program – those who accepted these invitations and those who did not. The level of student interaction and engagement with these materials was significant. There are few moments in this educator’s life that will match what took place when all of us sat down, read, analyzed, and then discussed these materials. The students told me that this was the day the tour took on a whole new complexion – both in terms of the plight of the victims as well as the humanity of the perpetrators. Perhaps some of the pics below will capture this in some small way.

We also enjoyed a long regional train ride to the west of Berlin, our first interaction with Turkish food, and making several other important spontaneous discovers in the town of Brandenburg.

Tomorrow we have a surprise edit to our schedule. It looks like we will be able to visit and tour the family home of Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Stay tuned.

Other pictures from around Brandenburg.