On the study abroad tour that I lead to Germany and Poland, we spend half a day each at Auschwitz I and Auschwitz II, more properly known as Auschwitz-Birkenau or just Birkenau. The Birkenau camp contains the iconic railhead, infamous selection platform, ruins of four gas chambers and crematoria, as well as the ordered rows of chimneys stretching out over vast open fields. These poorly functioning appliances being the only remnants left of the dreary and inhospitable barracks that once checkered the grounds inside the electrified and barb-wired fences. Auschwitz I, however, is composed of 22 two-story brick buildings originally

About an hour north on the Regional 1 train out of Berlin brings you to a beautiful German town called Fürstenberg an der Havel (Furstenberg, on the river Havel). Just a short distance to the northeast of Fürstenberg, a 3- to 4-kilometer walk from the train station around a swelling in the Havel called Lake Schwedtsee, sits Ravensbrück Concentration Camp. Ravensbrück was distinct as the only major German-based concentration camp set up exclusively for women prisoners (near the end of the war, the camp was expanded to include a men’s section). In all other respects, it was a typical Nazi

Just one city block down from Checkpoint Charlie on Niederkirchnerstraβe sits the Topography of Terror, a museum intentionally positioned at the site of the former headquarters for various notorious Nazi organizations such as the Gestapo and the Einsatzgruppen (a contingent of the Schutzstaffel, or SS; these were the specialized killing squads that ran riot behind the advancing German lines in the conquered territories of the East, rounding up and killing in mass Jews, Romani and Sinti peoples, as well as other perceived political or biological threats). Running along the front of the main museum building still stands the longest extant