Thursday, February 1, 2018

The Dark Shadows of the Past.

When we got to Berlin we experienced some emotionally heavy stuff. With our first day we started off with a tour of the city but our guide showed us not only the beauty of Berlin but also the shadows of it's darker past. That being said this post will take on a much more serious and darker tone as a reflect back on how to process and handle experiencing such history like this. The first emotionally heavy thing we encountered that day was the monument Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe. The memorial was unique in the sense that the artist behind it nor anyone else really gave it a single meaning, for they intended one to experience it independently and personally when one walks through it. For me I felt the memorial was a very effective way to show someone just a small dose of the feeling and sense of isolation, and the overwhelming feeling that a victim of the holocaust would have endured. For as I walked through the pillars of stone, I felt alone even though I was with our entire class for the way the stones were erected the effectively muffle the sound of very one else while at the same time strengthening your own. They way the memorial did this so effectively made me feel just for a moment the pain of the holocaust and I carried with me that memory of the feeling for the rest of that day.

The Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe.
Our tour ended in the topography of terror museum which is a comprehensive look of the rise and fall of the Nazi regime in both Berlin and in Germany overall. Most importantly it does not in anyway hold back, it shows all the facts as they are carrying with all the brutality of the past with it. This museum is hard to go through on it's own, and after my experience at the memorial that day I had to take it step by step. The most impactful part to me was the the map of all the concentration and death camps in Germany, for it was presented like any of the other pieces but to me I couldn't even imagine the kind of person that could plan this out like any other building project. The coldness I felt form it almost made me sick, and even now day's later it is hard to even talk about my experience with it.
The Map of all the Concentration Camps in Germany.
The fallowing day we took a 30 minute train ride to the Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp, the main Concentration camp outside Berlin. Although it was not an "official death camp" like Auschwitz, if you were sent here you not meant to come back. For the goal of the camp was to work people to death, as the ominous quote on the front gate by the processing house states: "My work shall set me Free". As it was in death that the victims here escaped the brutality of the camp.
"My work shall set me Free".
 For most of our tour nobody said a word even though our guide had encouraged us to ask questions on many occasions, as many of us were too somber to speak. And even after the tour many of us, including me, needed some time to process all of what we saw. But for me what our tour guide said at the end of the tour really helped me come to terms with every thing we saw. And I think this fits well to help wrap up the heavy content of this post. He put it like this we must remember the facts and not the myths for we should know the failures of the past so that when we go forward to the future we can make a positive impact on our world, and make sure we do not mimic the dark shadows of the past.

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