Church, Work, and Play On this Mother’s Day Sunday we first made time available for folks to attend a local service. Most students either went to the Berliner Dom (Lutheran) in the morning or an Anglican service that met in the early evening at nearby St. Mary’s (a Catholic church which changed to Lutheran post reformation). Confused yet? In early afternoon we made our way to the south central part of the city where we took in one of Berlin’s most visited museums, The Jewish Museum. Lastly, students found their way to various eating establishments – and a few brave

House of the Wannsee Conference and Free Berlin Today we first traveled to the southwest of Berlin to the idyllic resort town on the lake named Wannsee. Here, in January of 1942, 15 high-ranking National Socialist government officials gathered to organize the implementation of the final solution to the Jewish question. Around the table sat 8 Ph.D’s and many other highly-educated, highly skilled leaders within the Nazi party. And within 90 minutes they had finished all the needed arrangements and coordinations and adjourned the meeting. Sometimes we go to places which highlight the victims, today we focused on the perpetrators.

A Day in the City of Luther Today the group boarded a south-bound region train to a different German province, Saxony-Anhalt, and the city of Wittenberg, where we were walked through a guided tour on all things Luther. A pleasant one-day reprieve from our program’s focus. (The “Jewish Pig” display on the outside wall of the City Church of Wittenberg, however, reminds us of just how deeply embedded into the German psyche were the cultural references leveraged by the Nazis.) The main sites we visited were the Lutherhaus, the City Church, and the Castle Church. Pictures are below. Tomorrow we

The Memorial at Brandenburg I’m going to be super brief today. I need to catch up on sleep. We spent the day with historian and educator (and friend), Christian Marx. He works at the Brandenburg Euthanasia Memorial where he, among other responsibilities, organizes and leads group interactions with the history of the National Socialists’ attempt to rid the German public of “lives unworthy of life,” a phrase coined by academics over a decade before the Nazi’s came to power. Yes, it is a dark, dark topic. But the students did so very well. Christian met us in Berlin where we

Walking Tour of Berlin Our first full day of the tour was designed to ease ourselves into our topic and to gain familiarity with the many things to do within walking distance and short train rides around Berlin. On the lighter side, we checked out Checkpoint Charlie and the Brandenburg Gate (a subgroup went on to find the 1936 Olympiastadion and the Kaiser Wilhelm II Memorial Church ruins. On the more sobering side, we spent time at the Topography of Terror Museum, the Aktion T4 Memorial, and the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe. The first batch of pictures

Arriving in Berlin, Getting Familiar with Alexanderplatz On this first day we gathered everyone from the airport and made our way to our hotel, sitting in the heart of the city – Alexanderplatz. This impressively-sized square was the primary city center of the former East Berlin. Its’ most prominent feature is the towering Fernsehturn, the Soviet-built TV tower built in the late 1960’s made to both invoke Sputnik and to dwarf any similarly-shaped church steeple – a comment on an imagined future, one that bespeaks of the Soviet claim that technology is the true savior of humanity; a realization that

So Long, Kraków Today was our last day in Kraków, and indeed our last day of the tour. It was basically “Free Kraków” – however, we did have a final meal together and we did meet as a group to discuss Pierre Sauvage’s compelling documentary, Weapons of the Spirit, which chronicles the actions of the people of Le Chambon, a small community tucked away in the hills of south central France who managed to harbor about 5000 Jews during the war. In discussion, the students drew out several great observations – and a story like this was something we all

Auschwitz I and II Today we went to a place where language does not follow. A mere description of our day is all we have to offer. We walked through an 8-hour educational tour of Auschwitz I and Auschwitz II (Birkenau) with the help of my friend and exceptional guide, David Kennedy. Afterward, we met at the hotel to discuss our experience. In our time of sharing, many themes emerged. Here are some of the most persistent ones: the ethics of using knowledge gained by inhumane experiments and the post-war allied use of experts tainted by affiliation with the National