Recently, I was given an opportunity at an Asbury University chapel to briefly talk about the tour I lead each May. Given the super-tight time restriction, I thought it might be helpful to create a “stream-of-consciousness” description. I’ve copied it below. Pretzels, pastries, German chocolate, perogies, the Brandenburg Gate, the Berlin Wall, the Wawel Castle, Wittenberg and all things Luther, perogies, train rides through the countryside, walking through splendid little German towns, but what is that behind those dark walls…it looks foreboding.  ____ Churches, stunningly beautiful churches, St. Mary’s Basilica – have I ever been inside anything more magnificent? Did

On Wednesday evening, October 26th, nearly 350 students and community members crowded into the new CLC auditorium to view the first Asbury-student directed and shot documentary, Don’t Forget Us. The evening featured the 42 minute film followed by two panel discussions. The film project was the idea of Journalism professor, Rich Manieri, who traveled with his team of students to Germany and Poland to provide oversight for the project, also helping to write of the script. Here is a link to most of the events of the evening, including the documentary and the panel discussions: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i-Z9ZthcOao. Prof. Manieri plans to

In Berlin, just one block south of the Brandenburg gate, sits a relatively new holocaust-related exhibit, the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe. This installation, which opened in 2005, is massive, taking up an entire city block. Yet curiously, as one looks at it from the street, at no point does any part of the display rise above eye level. The exhibit consists of an assembly of over 2,700 rectangular concrete blocks, or stelae, ordered in grid-like rows and columns, spread across an area of 19,000 square meters. The blocks all measure the same in width and length with

Recently, on numerous occasions and across a variety of contexts, I’ve had my attention drawn to the topic of time; specifically, how I treat (and mistreat) it; that is, my time, my slowly but quite certainly expiring life. These referents have served to remind me of how easily I give up my time to practices that, while they may be healthy if well-regulated, far too often eat up significant chunks of my day. For me, the temptation typically takes the form of watching sports, playing games, and just thumbing through social media. To be clear, I do not believe there

(Presented to students in the Honors Program at Asbury University, August, 2021.) As you know, the honors experience here at Asbury is a themed enrichment program – our enduring theme is “Studies in Virtue and Human Value.” One of our program’s guiding questions is, “What gives humans value and dignity?” We all feel valued or at least we feel like we should be valued, and most people are quick to affirm their belief in the dignity of all people. But just beneath this feeling and belief lies the question of “why.” Why do we have this feeling and belief that

Typically, on about the third day of a tour, we visit our first concentration camp, Sachsenhausen. It is located in Oranienburg, a medium-sized medieval city that sits on the banks of the Havel River, just a few kilometers north of the capital; easily accessed with only a Berlin City Rail pass. Sachsenhausen, one of the earliest camps built by the National Socialists, was originally designed to house political prisoners. Over the years, the categories of occupants broadened to include prisoners of war as well as perceived racial and social threats to the state. However, the underlying and all-governing purpose for