19.1.2013 German History

West Berlin car

East Berlin car

Today we started the morning by going to a German History Museum called Deutsches Historishes Museum. It started with information about the region before it became Germany and went all the way through the end of WWII and when the Berlin Wall was torn down. There were some pretty interesting things in the museum like suits of armor (one of which we could pick up, it was ridiculously heavy), floor to ceiling paintings of royalty, a printing press, a lot of information about the Holocaust, and a display of what east and west Berlin were like after the wall was torn down.

Printing Press

Going through this museum was really interesting especially seeing how they incorporated the Holocaust into their history. Our professor has told us multiple times, and we've witnessed, that the Holocaust is kind of a touchy topic in Germany. However, walking through this museum it never seemed that they were trying to hide anything. It constantly felt like they were just trying to supply the public with information about their country and their culture, and despite the fact that the Holocaust is a rough topic for any one I think they did a really good and really thorough job of covering everything.

When we got to the section where the Nazis started to come into power there were some Nazi uniforms and some propaganda posters. As we progressed through the museum there was a model of a gas chamber and a lot of pictures from concentration camps and of people that died in the concentration camps. There was one picture in particular that caught my attention because it was of group of Jews at Auschwitz and one of the men looks like he is trying really hard to maintain his identity through all of the tough things that he is going through.

After we went to the German History Museum we went to the Berliner Dom which is a really big cathedral.

Berliner Dom

18.1.2013 HIstory of the Jews

This morning we got to sleep in a little bit. We left at 9:15 to get to the Jewish Museum. When we got the museum the first thing you start with is the Holocaust. Then you go upstairs and go through Jewish traditions and beliefs and things that were commonly used. As you continue through the museum you start to see antisemitism coming out of the woodwork and by the end of the museum you are back in the Holocaust section. It was really interesting to see the way they set it up so that you basically start in the very beginning and you end where a lot of Jews ended their lives. The structure of the museum was interesting too because the building is shaped strangely and as you walk through the museum you can look out little windows and see outside but you don't really know where you are which is probably what it was like for a lot of the Jews.

After the museum we went to Checkpoint Charlie. Then we got lunch. After that we went to the T.V. tower and rode all the way up to the top. From 203 meters high we could see almost all of Berlin. It was really cool.

After that we all split up to do our own things for a little while then we came back together for  dinner at an Indian restaurant right around the corner which was good because it was about 24 degrees outside.

More coming tomorrow!

17.1.2013 Deportation of Jews

We started our day today with heavy stuff. The first thing we did was go to a deportation site of Jews called Bahnhof Berlin-Grunewald. It was pretty interesting. The way they constructed it was they put metal plates over the ground and on the edges nearest to the train tracks they put the date, how many Jews were deported and where they went. When they started deporting Jews we could see that they sent around 30 Jews at a time and for the last few deportations they sent around 18-21 but in the middle there were groups that ranged from 100 to about 1700 Jews sent to Theresienstadt and then to Auschwitz or sent directly to Auschwitz. There were also some Jews sent to be shot in the woods in Riga.

After we went to the deportation site we went to Haus der Wannseekonferenz. The Haus der Wannseekonferenz is where people met over breakfast to plan for the Holocaust. The house has been turned into an exhibit for the Holocaust. There were a lot of really interesting charts and maps in the house. They showed what percentage of Jews were taken from European countries, and a lot of other statistics for the countries.

Next we had lunch in a Turkish restaurant in the train station on our way to a couple of palaces in Potsdam.

The first palace we went to was at Schloss Cecilienhof. The house was built for Crown Prince Wilhelm of Germany and his wife to be, Cicilie. This house was where the Potsdam Conference took place, Josef Stalin, Winston Churchill, and Harry S. Truman. They wrote up the Potsdam Declaration, which defined the terms of the Japanese surrender. The house felt very comfy and homey, the opposite of what the next palace felt like.

The next palace we went to was Sans Souci, which was the home of Frederick the Great. The entire house felt like a museum but it also felt really gaudy. Everything was plated in gold and over decorated. The outside was painted gold. The grounds were really pretty though. They were very green and there were a lot of trees and there was a really big pond out of the front doors that had a lot of birds in it.

After Sans Souci we went to a Swiss Buffet for dinner and then walked back to the hotel to enjoy the rest of the night.

16.1.2013 Tour of Berlin

-->

We started our morning at 8 o’clock this morning and headed to the Reichstag. The Reichstag is the parliament building of the German Empire and was burned severely in 1933. The building was not fully restored until 1990. They kept the outside of the building with its own architecture but the inside is all new architecture. We got to walk up a ramp that went around the outside of the dome and look out on the city and we had an audio tour that told us about different buildings we could see and details about the rebuilding process of the Reichstag, which was really cool.

After we went to he Reichstag we went to see the Brandenburg Gates. We didn’t spend much time there but it was really cool to see them. We also saw where the Berlin Wall was. It is marked by cobblestone that looks different from the rest in the street and sidewalks.

Next we walked down the street a little ways to the Berlin Holocaust Museum. Its official name is The Monument of the Murdered Jews in Europe. From the outside it looks like a bunch of concrete slabs on the ground that are all different heights. On the outside that’s what it is supposed to look like. The monument was built on a wave shaped piece of land and it was designed this way so that when you are walking through the monument you feel a sense of groundlessness and instability. There aren’t any names or religious identifiers on the plaques either this way it honors every single person that went through the holocaust. There is an underground part of the monument too that is more like a museum. The first room we went in was a long room and had a timeline of the events of the holocaust then when you get to the end of the room you go into the next room. The second room is dark and has screens in the ground that are the same size as the slabs of rock above you. On each screen there is an excerpt of a letter or postcard from someone that was in the holocaust. The one that got my attention the most was a man that was forced to work in a crematorium and said that when the bodies where burned they had to shovel out the ashes into a sieve over a river and sift for anything in the ashes. The next room you go into has a bunch of slabs coming down from the ceiling. They all had stories of individual families that went through the holocaust. There was usually a paragraph about the family and a lot of pictures with descriptions and then on the side there was an individual picture of each person and what happened to them. The next room you go into is completely dark with some benches and one name projected onto all four walls at one time, then the story of the person whose name is projected comes on over the speakers. The final room you go into has a lot of information about specific regions. There are four screens on the walls and each one starts on a map and zooms into a specific region and then there are some pictures of Jews and concentration camps and some details about what life was like in each region. I really liked the perspective that this monument gave me on the holocaust. A lot of teachers I’ve had that have taught the holocaust seemed to spend a lot of time just focusing on Auschwitz and that 6 million Jews were killed. But this monument gave us more of a European perspective and gave a lot of names of specific camps along with a lot of places that were affected.

After the Holocaust Monument we went to exchange our money and get some lunch.

After lunch we went to see the Berlin Wall. It was really interesting to get to see in person where the wall was and how it was set up. We got to climb up a staircase and get a rooftop view of a part of the wall that has been really well maintained.

Our professor wants to take us to the top of a T.V. tower but we don’t want to until we can get a really good view. After we saw the Berlin Wall we went to the KaDaWe which is basically just a really really big department store. We walked around a little bit and then we went up to the top floor, which is all food. It was incredible.

To end our day we went to a German restaurant that pretends to have been there for hundreds of years. I ordered the 2 fried sausages with sauerkraut and boiled potatoes in brown sauce.

 

The Reichstag

  

view from the Reichstag

                                                                    Brandenburg Gate

                                                       Walking through the Holocaust Monument

                                                               The Holocaust Monument

                                                                   Letters on the floor

                                                                       Preserved section of the Berlin Wall

                                                       Graffitied section of the Berlin Wall

 

                                                                                         Dinner!

 

Day One and Two

Today we arrived at the Richmond Airport around 10am, got our boarding passes, checked our bags, and got through security with out any problems. Once we got to our gate we had about 2 hours to kill so we sat around and talked and got some lunch. Our flight to Detroit from Richmond lasted about 2 hours and we had no difficulties. However, once we landed our professor checked our itinerary and our flight from Amsterdam to Berlin was cancelled due to snow in Berlin.

We got to our flight to Amsterdam just in time to board the plane and had an uneventful 7 hour plane ride to Amsterdam. Then a 7 hour layover in Amsterdam while we waited for our plane to arrive so we could leave for Frankfurt, and then we boarded a plane from Frankfurt to Berlin. After about 26 hours of travelling, dinner, and exploring some of Berlin at night we are just settling in for our first night in Berlin, Germany.

More tomorrow!

Hello!
In 4 days I will be leaving the country with a class from Randolph-Macon College. There are 7 students and our professor exploring different sites in Germany, Austria, and Hungary that relate to the Holocaust and Jewish culture. This week we have been reading a couple books (Still Alive by Ruth Kluger, and An Underground Life: Memoirs of a Gay Jew in Nazi Berlin by Gad Beck) and watching some movies and a miniseries (One, Two, Three, The Third Man, Rosenstrasse, and The Winds of War). From the books we learned a lot about what it was like for a couple of people that survived the Holocaust, and from the movies we have learned and discussed what experiences people had during the time of World War II and after the war. We will spend about two and a half weeks in Europe visiting various palaces, Holocaust Museums, Synagogues, and eating a lot of European cuisine.
More to come in a few days!!!