This one's a bit of a downer

The past few days have been… intense. Monday and Tuesday were… heavy, as they focused mainly on the Nazi regime. One of the most impactful moments was walking through the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, a holocaust memorial here in Berlin that’s basically a hilly grid of 2,711 concrete pillars of varying heights, no two of which are entirely alike. It sounds really simple, but walking though it is… a profound experience.

Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe

Like a good little tour group, we filed in as our guide suggested. Walking into it was like… descending into the depths of someplace. As you move into the monument, the pillar-block things get taller and taller. After a moment, you can’t even tell the place is at a busy intersection. To me, it felt like being in a forest, but everything is in a grid, so you can see all the way through to the ends of the monument—the exits. That was sort of reassuring, but also… in the moments when I was alone and couldn’t see anyone down the entire length of the grid… that was a powerful feeling of isolation. In the center of the piece, the pillars get really, really tall, so you’re walking in this narrow space through huge, ominous, oppressively looming stone blocks while thoughts flit through your head real fast. I felt so small and insignificant. People also seem to come out of nowhere when you’re walking the grid, and then they move out of sight an instant later. Or maybe you follow along the same path for a while, but it’s easy to lose them again—just make a turn or two and all traces of them are gone, like they were never even there in the first place. Our class went in all together, but we filtered out one at a time. Watching my classmates suddenly appear from this forest of columns was eerie, like they were specters or something materializing out of nowhere. Seeing a monument is so different from being entirely enveloped by one. I haven’t felt anything like that before, but I’m really glad for the experience even though it was a sobering one.

Later in the Topography of Terror (Nazi Museum), I got chills reading about a scientist—with a really similar educational background as me—who studied methods of mass murder, and it happened another time listening to Himmler talking about undesirable “phenotypes.” The clinicality… the cold-bloodedness… but they’re talking about people… We use the word phenotype all the time in biology—it’s a fundamental concept from evolutionary to molecular topics—but here it’s all twisted and gruesome… It was hard to read and listen to those parts—and others—but an important task nonetheless. Plus, it led me and a few classmates into a good conversation about ethics in science.

The next day we toured Sachsenausen Concentration Camp, which was a heavy experience all around. There was a lot—a lot to take in, a lot of emotions and thoughts, most of which I think I’ll keep to myself for now. But one of the… more intense moments was when we left. We only had to spend few hours there, learn some things, and then we just got to take an easy train ride back to our lives. This runs so contrary to what the people who were imprisoned there experienced… the contrast was pretty jarring, chilling, contemplation-inducing. I was lost in thought basically the whole ride back. But, that’s kind of the point of a memorial isn’t it? To think about the things that happened and determine for yourself that you can’t let them happen again.

Sachsenhausen Gate: "work sets you free"

So yeah, these experiences were heavy, jarring, sobering, and much more, but I’m glad for them. I think it was important to acknowledge what happened—sweeping things under the rug is what leads to atrocities like this after all. Ignoring things that are uncomfortable doesn’t help fix the problem or help you learn anything.