Today was a break from the extremely emotionally heavy things that we had been dealing with the past two days (the two concentration camps). We visited the Wannsee Haus to discuss the Wannsee Conference (still a sad, intense topic). This was where the Final Solution was established during the Holocaust. Under-secretaries of the elite Nazi leaders gathered in the house we visited today and planned out how to systematically eliminate all Eastern European Jews. Our guide also told us that the conference attendees took a break in the middle of the discussion to have breakfast. The banal way in which they treated the genocide of an entire race really shocked me.
After the seminar we went to Gleis 17 which is the train track where Jews from Berlin were gathered and deported to concentration camps in Eastern Europe. There were many memorials there which were all unique and different in their own way. One of the memorials contained birch trees from the town surrounding Auschwitz-Birkenau (the word "birch" is a derivative of "Birkenau"). Our assistant professor on the trip, Malgosia, told us that she had been growing one of these trees on her porch as a way of commemorating the Jewish lives lost at Auschwitz which I thought was really cool.
We ended the day on a positive note by having a private tour of the German Bundestag (parliamentary building). We got to see one of Chancellor Angela Merkel's offices and also the parliamentary room where sessions are held. It was a good end to a rather tough week.
Today was a break from the extremely emotionally heavy things that we had been dealing with the past two days (the two concentration camps). We visited the Wannsee Haus to discuss the Wannsee Conference (still a sad, intense topic). This was where the Final Solution was established during the Holocaust. Under-secretaries of the elite Nazi leaders gathered in the house we visited today and planned out how to systematically eliminate all Eastern European Jews. Our guide also told us that the conference attendees took a break in the middle of the discussion to have breakfast. The banal way in which they treated the genocide of an entire race really shocked me.
After the seminar we went to Gleis 17 which is the train track where Jews from Berlin were gathered and deported to concentration camps in Eastern Europe. There were many memorials there which were all unique and different in their own way. One of the memorials contained birch trees from the town surrounding Auschwitz-Birkenau (the word "birch" is a derivative of "Birkenau"). Our assistant professor on the trip, Malgosia, told us that she had been growing one of these trees on her porch as a way of commemorating the Jewish lives lost at Auschwitz which I thought was really cool.
We ended the day on a positive note by having a private tour of the German Bundestag (parliamentary building). We got to see one of Chancellor Angela Merkel's offices and also the parliamentary room where sessions are held. It was a good end to a rather tough week.
Today was a break from the extremely emotionally heavy things that we had been dealing with the past two days (the two concentration camps). We visited the Wannsee Haus to discuss the Wannsee Conference (still a sad, intense topic). This was where the Final Solution was established during the Holocaust. Under-secretaries of the elite Nazi leaders gathered in the house we visited today and planned out how to systematically eliminate all Eastern European Jews. Our guide also told us that the conference attendees took a break in the middle of the discussion to have breakfast. The banal way in which they treated the genocide of an entire race really shocked me.
After the seminar we went to Gleis 17 which is the train track where Jews from Berlin were gathered and deported to concentration camps in Eastern Europe. There were many memorials there which were all unique and different in their own way. One of the memorials contained birch trees from the town surrounding Auschwitz-Birkenau (the word "birch" is a derivative of "Birkenau"). Our assistant professor on the trip, Malgosia, told us that she had been growing one of these trees on her porch as a way of commemorating the Jewish lives lost at Auschwitz which I thought was really cool.
We ended the day on a positive note by having a private tour of the German Bundestag (parliamentary building). We got to see one of Chancellor Angela Merkel's offices and also the parliamentary room where sessions are held. It was a good end to a rather tough week.