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Oświęcim is a town in the southern part of Poland which is known as the place where Auschwitz is located. Apart from its connection to the notorious camp, this town has a seperate history of its own. The history of Oświęcim dates back to the 12th century when it was an important centre of the […]

Around 1.5 million people were murdered in Auschwitz during the Holocaust. Since then, the camp has become one of the most recognizable symbols of this genocide.  The infamous “Arbeit macht frei” gate, the rows of identical bunks, and the gas chambers have all been cemented in the minds of millions around the globe.   In 1940, the […]

Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp  was opened on July 12, 1936, after being built by prisoners. Located in Oranienburg, Germany, near Berlin, it was initially used by the Nazi Party to imprison political prisoners. Soon enough, “asocials,” homosexuals, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and Jews,  many of whom were arrested during Kristallnacht. After the camp was liberated and the war […]

I appreciated the opportunity I had to research the Berlin Jewish Museum before attending it; the process helped me conceptualize how a museum could teach me about the repression, violence and memory of the Holocaust with its physical structure more than with its historical content.  As a result, I could critique— rather than merely identify– […]

On the morning of May 17th, our group visited the Topography of Terror Museum. Located at the location of many important former Nazi buildings, the exhibits here focus on a perpetrator perspective by trying to explain how the Nazis logistically committed a genocide. The museum did this by explaining events in a thorough, chronological way, […]

The House of Wannsee is the location of the notorious Wannsee Conference, the meeting where Nazi officials discussed and decided how to implement the extermination of European Jewry in January 1942. When you drive up to it, you are greeted with a large iron gate containing a beautiful mansion overlooking Lake Wannsee. It is located […]

Our first city, Berlin, was a great introduction to the remainder of our trip. As the center of the Nazi empire and place where many important executive decisions about the “final solution” were made, the city has a unique history in relation of to the Holocaust. In Germany and Europe, there was a history of […]

“The Federal Republic of Germany shall erect a memorial in Berlin to the homosexuals persecuted under the National Socialist regime.  With this memorial, the Federal Republic of Germany intends: to honour the victims of persecution and murder to keep alive the memory of this injustice, and to create a lasting symbol of opposition to enmity, […]

The Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe stands in the center of Berlin. It consists of 2,711 concrete blocks of varying heights and widths that cover 19,000 square meters of space in the center of the city. This memorial consumes a large piece of real estate in a part of the city and intersects […]

We visited the “Memorial to the Sinti and Roma of Europe Murdered Under National Socialism” on our first day in Berlin.  The memorial commemorates the 220,000-500,000 victims of the Porajmos, which is the Nazi genocide of the European Sinti and Roma peoples. Since this was our first day in Berlin and on the trip, my […]