This March break, 11 students and two faculty members are traveling to Berlin, Prague, and Krakow to explore the idea of monuments and memorials and their role in public memory, and learn more about the Holocaust and how Germany, Czechoslovakia, and Poland responded in the late 20th century and early 21st century to the study of Holocaust memory, public art, and their fusion in contemporary life. Please enjoy the blog post below from Henry ’26 and Bright ’28 where they share about the group’s journey through Berlin, Prague, and Kraków, reflecting on how witnessing history firsthand—especially at sites like Auschwitz and Terezin—deepened their understanding of memory, injustice, and the extraordinary perseverance of the Jewish people in the face of unimaginable suffering.
This trip has opened my eyes to what is really means to understand something complicated and difficult, or as Mr. Leistler would say it, how we as people reckon with different hard and deep topics. In the fall and winter, I was in Mr. Leistler’s Politics and Science of Memory class, in which we throughout almost 7 months, figured out how to reckon with the past and understand how history is recorded, as well as how Politics (which in other words is just simply a way to say power), affects how history is remembered. This trip really illustrated that although 7 months of material can be telling, and of course I learned so much, but that by learning in the moment and by surrounding yourself with physical history rather than just reading it out of a history book, you learn and remember history so much more effectively. By going to so many Museums that show Jewish history and different forms of art that represent ways we can remember the Holocaust, it creates a more deep relationship between the student and the history itself, and makes the process of reckoning with something as difficult and saddening as the Holocaust much more easy. Lastly, I think the most moving part of the whole trip that proves the notion of how the best way to understand and reckon with history is by physically experiencing it is shown through the group’s trip to the death camp, Auschwitz. This massive death camp really made me think in a different way than I ever had before this when thinking about the Holocaust. The vast amount of land that Auschwitz had, in my eyes just made me think how great the number that we always hear, 6 million, really is. Every bed someone slept in, every toilet people had to fight to get, and every second these prisoners had to fight for was felt and seen when we as a group visited this terrible place. I am very grateful for the knowledge I have been able to gain through this trip, and I hope others can physically experience this trip with all of the cities, museums, and other representations of history so people will never forget the tragedy that was the Holocaust ever again.
– Henry ’26
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What are determination and perseverance? I once thought that those two qualities are given at birth; people are naturally braver and more determined than others. For example, some people naturally enjoy or quickly get used to speaking, performing, and presenting to an immense audience. However, perseverance and determination are also a skill that can be developed. When somebody or a group constantly suffers hatred and pain from the world but is still willing to look back and reflect on their past, they have truly developed the spirit of perseverance and determination. On our trips to Berlin, Prague (Including Terezin), and Krakow, we have witnessed the determination and painful past of the Jewish people.
We had a little “warm-up” in Berlin, where we visited the Berlin Jewish Museum and the Jewish Memorial. The two locations embrace a more artistic approach to the past of Jews. In the Berlin museum, we walked through the famous corridor filled with metal slates (metal masks). The clanking and clinging of the masks are like dehumanized cries of the Jewish suffering. Then in the Jewish memorial, we experienced Jewish suffering that is portrayed not by sound, but by space. We had to walk in narrow, dimly lit passageways that went deeper and deeper into the earth. The experience in the memorial is too abstract to describe, but overall, I had some good “warm-ups”.
Then, before we could cool down from our warm-ups, I felt concrete pain when visiting Terezin, a town used as a concentration camp just to the south of Dresden and Sudetenland. The pain was a build-up.
We first learned that rooms as small as 9 square meters had to fit over 80 people.
We then learned that in the winter after the prisoners’ clothes are washed, the cloth would become frozen and scrape against the prisoners’ skin.
We finally learned that the Nazi officers forced prisoners to eat potatoes with large amounts of salt, which is unbearable to the human body. The result is a slow, painful death process that lasts for 7 days.
The pain finally came to a peak when we watched a 20-minute film, which talked about prisoners that were sent to other camps FROM Terezin.
-Designation Ag. (A camp location): Out of 1000 people, 5 survived.
-Designation Ap. : Out of 1000 people, 3 survived.
-Designation Al./Az. : Out of 1000 people, 1 survived
-Designation Bo to Bx. : Out of 19,004 people, 3 survived.
-Designation Ay. : Out of 1,000 people, none survived.
I cannot imagine the amount of perseverance to survive this non-humane torture.
Right now, at 10:41 AM EST on March 21, 2025, I still feel dampened when I look back at these numbers.
As we proceeded to Prague, we had some rest from the painful past and took a glimpse of the beautiful city. It was a great relief because Terezin was too overwhelming for me.
Finally, we were off to Krakow, our final destination of the trip. As we headed north, through the gap of the Carpathian mountains, I thought, “What will I see in Auschwitz-Birkenau? How would I feel?”. But I soon told myself to concentrate on the present and enjoy the travel day (and also a rest day) of the trip. The Carpathian mountains were beautiful; they were waves that gave a change of emotions, a change of color to the monotonous plains of Central and Northern Europe. It is hard to imagine that just north of this beautiful mountain range, at Auschwitz-Birkenau, humanity committed its worst crime since its existence. I’m sure that Auschwitz-Birkenau also gave a change of emotions and change of color to Europe…with the cost of 1.1 million lives.
Surprisingly, I didn’t feel overwhelmed when going to Auschwitz-Birkenau. But I soon realized that I was overwhelmed to the degree that I felt numb and that numbness began when we finished the first half of the tour to Auschwitz-1. We saw the leftovers (pieces of luggage, shows, hair, eyeglasses) of the Jews who were murdered in Auschwitz. All of these things have lost their owner…it’s hard to describe my feelings with words. We also saw hundreds of photographs of the victims, with labels of their survival time within Auschwitz. These fresh lives…they just fade away into ashes. I felt numb.
On the second part of the trip, when I learned that the Nazis could kill 7000 people in 30 minutes in Auschwitz’s gas chambers, I did not react because I didn’t know how to react. The cold wind of end-of-winter hit me like blades and my heart was left frozen, so I couldn’t feel anything. The tightness continued to the end of our Auschwitz tour.
My English teacher always reminded me that during an essay, I have to constantly tie back my main paragraphs’ ideas to the thesis/main idea of the passage. But in this passage, I’m not doing this. I want you, the reader, to interpret, and understand the amount of determination of the Jewish people to get through all of this inhumane treatment, yet still be brave enough to look back. I’m just listing what I see.
When bad things happen, Justice will always arrive, but it will arrive very late. I want this memory to live in people’s hearts so bad things won’t happen again.
Not ever again. – Bright ’28
