Below is a summary of this year’s Holocaust Studies Tour, 2024 The tour this year was, as each one promises to be, a sundry blend of the predictable and repeatable commingled with the new, the unanticipated, and the potently particular. This is the complex base-fabric out of which study abroad experiences are cut. With regard to the new and particular, I was so pleased this time around to be able to meet Dr. Daniel Rottke and Historian Fabian Schwanzar at a place called Alt Rehse, a retreat and resort built by the National Socialists on the western banks of the

About ten years ago, I found myself in mid-career and looking for some new direction. A good friend of mine, Dr. Brian Shelton, who had significant experience with study abroad trips, suggested we combine our interests and offer a psychologically and theologically themed Holocaust Studies tour of central Europe. We crafted together a rather ambitious schedule that covered 4 cities in about 9 days. Amidst the many museums, memorials, and related points of interest were two concentration camps, Dachau and Auschwitz. Even though we had over 30 students combined from two different institutions, everything went off without a hitch. A

Over the past 10 years I’ve had the privilege of leading a Holocaust-themed study abroad experience for undergraduates at Asbury University. After taking nearly 200 students to euthanasia memorials, concentration camps, and extermination centers, I have come to realize just how much courage it takes to say “yes” to a trip like this. To make my case, here is a brief description of what a tour typically involves. The itinerary centers on two European cities – Berlin, Germany and Kraków, Poland. In Berlin (and the surrounding areas) students typically experience the following: an interaction with diplomats at the U.S. Embassy,

A reflection on 25 days with students in Germany and Poland One of the strongest intuitions of thought uncovered by psychological researchers has to do with the pairing of goodness and beauty. It is most readily detected when we encounter beautiful faces or scenery with the result being that we naturally feel that goodness must be there as well. The effect is so reliable that it has its own name, the “physical-attractiveness stereotype,” or more generally (albeit more awkwardly), the “what-is-beautiful-is-good” effect. And the flip side is also true. That is, when we find something to be good, our judgments