Reflections

Our last day in Prague is a flurry of activity. In the morning, we visit the Jewish Ghetto, the Hradcany castle, St. Vitus Cathedral, and Franz Kafka's former residence. The afternoon is dedicated to last minute shopping, and the evening to our going away dinner. We the chaperon's have a rather "Stonehenge" moment as we supervise a trail mix competition, give awards for the trip, and watch on as Mr. Goldwarg serenades us one final time.
On Sunday we wake up extra early, and go from bus, to Prague's airport, to Paris, to Boston. Excited parents and surely customs agents greet us upon our return.
So what of it all? What ways have we, both the students and the chaperons, changed as the result of this trip? On the Friday of our return, many students from the trip wore orange shirts in support of Amnesty International and encouraging other students and teachers to question them about the meaning of the statistics they broadcast. Friday even more Facing History students will travel to the Holocaust Museum in our nation's capital to examine the same issues that we studied on the trip.
Today, Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir has been accused of war crimes and crimes against humanity, but not genocide. What does the future hold for the families of the murdered in Sudan, the displaced refugees from war-torn countries worldwide? Will our community at school respond differently as a result of what we have seen, or will history continue without our influence? Only time will tell for sure.

Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.
George Santayana, The Life of Reason, Volume 1, 1905

Saturday 2.21, Terezin

According to Mr. Crane, "Terezin is all smoke and mirrors." This camp was different from the others that we saw. Located about one hour outside of Prague, Terezin is a Czech town that was taken over by the Nazis where Jews and Christians from the Czech Republic, and German Jews were sent. That isn't the entire story. For example; many German Jews in the camp paid for their train tickets to Terezin, and brought their valuables along with them. It was advertised as a day spa, which Jews could not attend as per the Nuremberg laws. The German Jews would arrive, have their valuables confiscated, and would be shuffled into the barracks where Czech Jews, all of who had been forcibly shipped to the camp, awaited. Conditions were, as one would expect in a camp, terrible. Prisoners had to deal with cramped living space, no personal freedoms, disease, and death. However, in some ways, the camp seems less bad than Auschwitz or Birkenau superficially. There was an active theater group there that performed plays and comedy routines. There were musical groups that performed regularly. People who were artists on the outside were put to work making art, albeit propaganda art for the Nazis. Those who died at the camp, Jewish or Christian, were afforded to a proper burial. Compared to the bleak hopelessness of the other camps, Terezin seems less bad. However, there is a decidedly more sinister side to the camp.
Prisoners at Terezin were helping to construct gas chambers at Theresienstadt, a nearby fortress being used by the Nazis as a prison camp used to hold Russian POWs and dissidents from Terezin. Although the gas chambers were never completed, thousands were executed at Theresienstadt. Many were tortured to death. Thousands more were shipped to Auschwitz to be gassed there. When Typhus broke out in Terezin, hundreds died as a result. "Not so bad" is only skin deep.
The ruse was however, good enough to fool the Red Cross. The Nazis made a propaganda film showing healthy men showering, people gardening, nurses treating old and sick patients, children playing, musicians performing, and residents looking generally content. When the Red Cross inspected Theresienstadt, they found that prisoners had a large shower room, and a room with individual sinks and mirrors; conditions that far exceeded the Geneva conditions for treatment of prisoners in wartime. Based upon the film and inspection, the Red Cross gave the Nazis a favorable review. In reality, the healthy showering men were recent arrivals to the camp, who had yet to show the ill effects of months of a starvation diet. The garden was irrigated with water from a nearby river, where crematorium ashes were dumped. The garden in the film was essentially fertilized with the camp's dead. Children did not live a happy existence at Terezin; they were forced to labor at the camp or were shipped to be "Aaryanized" with German families. People starved to death, and typhus was rampant in the cramped conditions. In fact, the individual sinks in Theresienstadt weren't even hooked up to water!
The smoke and mirrors were enough to prevent the Red Cross from sounding a warning cry about concentration camps, which was one of the numerous reasons that death factories such as Auschwitz, Birkenau, and Majdanek could continue as they did. The Red Cross did not apologize for their oversight until the 1970's. How much of the blame for these events do they deserve?
Ultimately, the end result for many of the occupants of Terezin was the same for prisoners at many other concentration camps. What makes it unique is the level of illusion that surrounded the camp. One feels guilty seeing irony in events that occurred there, rather than the pure tragedy of other camps. It begs us all to be extra vigilant as genocidal groups today continue to try and pull the wool over our eyes.

Friday 2.20, Prague

We stumble off of our overnight train from Krakow with heavy eyes. According to our conductor, newer trains frequently succumb to the harsh Polish winters, so we rode on a much older one. By older, I mean smellier, less roomy, and much more subject to lurching, creaking, and other sorts of things. One group found snow in their room in the morning. We put this behind us, and board a bus to the International School of Prague, the ISP. Here, children of diplomats, ambassadors, and international businessmen study, in English, from pre-K to 12th grade.
We are ushered into their cafeteria, where they have prepared a breakfast for us. Soon students from the school come to greet us, and bring BLS students with them to their classes. I am fortunate enough to spend their first class block talking with the ISP’s chemistry teacher. For the entire block, we sit (over coffee thankfully), and discuss our school climates, our respective philosophies of education, our successes, and our shortcomings as science teachers. We end up having an awful lot in common. It is refreshing and a little bit validating to find an overseas colleague who deals with many of the same struggles that I am dealing with back in the states. Regardless of the country, misconceptions exist, students struggle to master concepts, safety and class size restrictions impede on the learning process, and the work is never done. I hope that we continue our correspondence in the future; it is always good to talk about teaching and get new ideas!
During the second class block of our visit, I sat in on a class entitled “Theory of Knowledge”. The students in this class sat with their desks in a circle, and engaged in a Socratic debate regarding whether Relativism or non-Relativism is closer to absolute truth. The students were prepared, engaged, polite within the debate format, and very thoughtful about their points. After the class began, the teacher sat back and let the debate happen. It was wonderful to watch the students develop their own understandings. Although I don’t think a conclusive agreement was reached, the students were clearly benefiting from the topic and the format. Ultimately the leadership and critical thinking skills that was fostered in the class will transcend the topic of discussion.
At the conclusion of the class, we hustle away from the ISP and travel into old town Prague. An addition to our group is Mr. Crane, a history teacher from ISP who has lived in Prague for the past 20 years. He will be our personal tour guide within the city of Prague. After checking into our hotel, he takes on a tour of downtown Prague. It is a fascinating place. Because it was not destroyed in either of the World Wars, downtown Prague is full of some of the oldest buildings in Europe. Walking down one of its narrow cobblestone streets, one could pass buildings built in Gothic style next to ones built in Cubist style next to buildings built in Art Nuveau style. It seems like every building has a history, and since we are being shuffled around by two architecture buffs, we hear about a lot of it. The walking tour takes much of the afternoon, and after some free time and dinner, we go to sleep in preparation for tomorrow. We will be visiting our final concentration camp of the tour, Terezin/Theresienstadt.

Pictures from the Czech Republic

Properly sorted, and commented on!

EE Czech Republic

Pictures from Poland

Sorted and commented on 3.2.

EE Krakow

Thursday 2.19, Krakow

Today we toured many sites within the citz of Krakow, including

• Kazimierz square
• Remuh synagogue
• Podgorze ghetto
• Museum of the Under the Eagle pharmacz
• Factory of Oskar Shindler
• Former Jewish ghetto wall

The sites are much easier for the group to handle than our visit yesterdaz to Majdanek. Much of the focus of our tour is on the Jewish resistence, especially at the Under the Eagle pharmacy. This shed light on two crucial parts of Holocaust history that are often overlooked. One is that the Jews mounted a very serious resistence in Poland. Their opression and murder is often the only thing we hear about. A "Jewish person" becomes "the Jewish people", and somehow they were all only passive victims? Hardly the case in the Podgorze ghetto. While World War 2 was obviously on e fo the darkest periods for a people in history, the fact that there were many sites of organized resistence is very important to remember. An elaborate network for smuggling medicine to people in the ghetto existed. Valuables and sometimes people were hidden in the pharmacy. Plans for escape through the sewers were developed and carried out. It is inspirational to see what people overcame in order to fight back against their occupation. Other sites within the former ghetto also illuminate our understanding of how the Jewish community in Warsaw developed, was broken up and persecuted during World War 2, and has been regrouping and rebuilding ever since.
After we leave the former ghetto, the rest of the day is dedicated to free time in Warsaw. A few of us take a run through the city, while many people shop and tour museums and churches. After dinner, we board a rather poorly kept sleeper train to take us overnight to Prague.

Wednesday 2.18, Krakow, Lublin

We wake up at 6:00 Am, have a very quick breakfast, and get on the bus by 7:30. We have two bus drivers today to manage the 10+ hour round trip to Lublin. On the bus everybody is typically silly and in good sprits. There is a Bon Jovi “Livin on a Prayer” sing along, an unfortunate 45 minute wait for a toilet at a gas station, and a good deal of napping. When we arrive at Majdanek, the mood changes quickly.
Whereas Auschwitz and Birkenau were either systematically dismantled by retreating Nazis or destroyed by advancing Allied forces, Majdanek is essentially as it was when the Nazis left it. The Russians advanced on the camp quickly, and the Nazis essentially picked up and left. As a result, the camp is completely in tact. Auschwitz was like a grim museum; Birkenau was like a stark graveyard. I don’t have a good word to describe Majdanek.
The first thing we saw upon our arrival was a Russian-built open-air memorial for those murdered in the camp. It is a roof covering a pit the size of a 25-meter swimming pool filled with a pile of ashes from the crematorium. Fragments of bone are readily visible in the pile. From there we walk to the site of mass graves. In 1943, tens of thousands of prisoners were murdered here. They were forced to dig a hole, and lie down in the bottom, where they were shot. After that another group was forced to lie on top of them, and were then shot. This went on for almost a full day, until the mass graves were full, leaving mounds above the normal ground level when the dirt was replaced. Beyond the cruel depravity of this act, there is another dimension as well. Houses and businesses in Lublin are only about 200 meters away from these graves. What did the people of Lublin hear? When interviewed after the war, townspeople often stated that they had no idea what was going on. Considering that the only fence surrounding the camp is barbed wire, and the closeness to the town, that seems unlikely. How often do we ignore injustice and brutality in our world, and more so, in our own backyard? Are we turning a deaf ear as the townspeople of Lublin seemed to do?
From the mass grave, we move into the crematorium. A Jewish tour group from France is also in the crematorium, where they hold a prayer service. We wait in the room by the entrance until the finish. As they walk out of the crematorium, with tears streaming down their faces, we walk in. We are much closer to the ovens here. Some of them still have coal and ashes in them. We spend a long time in this room, trying to make sense of it all. We gather ourselves and visit Majdanek’s gas chambers. In one room, you can see the blue stains left by Zyclon B gas and fingernail scratches on the walls.
Majdanek also has warehouses full of artifacts. We walk through one literally brimming with shoes. Supposedly, when Russian troops first opened the door after taking Majdanek, shoes just poured out from behind a door nearly bursting. We then travel to our final stop; an exhibit deducted to the children of Majdanek. The haunting sounds of a Polish children’s lullaby play as we follow the paths of four children brought to the camp, three of whom survived, one of whom was killed. It is an incredibly touching exhibit that resonates powerfully with our group.
We leave the camp with one of the designers of the exhibit who is a member of a local Jewish group from Lublin. His group is committed to maintaining the Jewish community in the town and remembering the victims of the Holocaust. He gives us a tour of his town, and leaves us to have dinner at a local restaurant. We reboard the bus, and take our five-hour bus ride back to Krakow. As the group’s mood re-equilibrates towards a less somber one, I wonder. What can we take from today? This was the emotional equivalent of being bunched in the stomach. There were images and artifacts at Majdanek that almost no on e can be prepared to see until they are there. Does this mean that we will be different people? Will we be ready to stand up against the evils of the world? Has viewing this camp made us all less likely to succumb to group pressures that are unjust? I hope so.

Tuesday 2.17 Krakow, Oswiecim

We arrive in Poland by overnight train. Emerging from compartments that stacked 3-4 of us in beds practically up to the ceiling. After checking in to our hotel in Krakow, we prepare for our first trip to a concentration camp. After a quick breakfast, we take a bus trip our to Oswiecim, the town where the Auschwitz camp is located. Auschwitz is shocking for several reasons. Upon entering the gates, one is filled with a sense of foreboding. Thousands and thousands of people, who were murdered by the Nazis, walked any path that one would take within the camp. This is the site where they were starved, gassed, shot, or otherwise put to death in numbers too great for me able to truly comprehend. This is also a site with tour arrows, and glass display cases. Once you get past the sense of dread, the second shocking thing about Auschwitz is that it can feel like a museum; albeit an authentic one. You travel from room to room while tour guides give guided tours, leading groups from rooms, which discuss children at the camp, torture, medical experiments, Roma, medical experiments, and all other terrible aspects of the camp.

The history is grim, and the artifacts are gristly. There is a room full of a display case consisting entirely of human hair, shaved from inmates upon their arrival. There is a room full of Red Cross photographs of people starved to less than one half their bodies weight; literally walking skeletons. In the basement of one barrack, the tiny rooms where Nazi doctors experimented on Polish political prisoners with the lethal Zyclon B gas eventually used in the gas chambers are across the hall from brick structures where other prisoners were kept standing for days at a time. At the edge of the camp is the most shocking part; the gas chamber. The dark, dingy grey brick building is the site of thousands and thousands of deaths by Zyclon B gas. On the other side of the building is the crematorium. Large ovens lie in front of tracks with carts on them for pushing bodies in. The room was the most emotional for our group. Members left the gas chamber somber and profoundly affected. Auschwitz was not, however, the last camp we were to visit this day.

Birkenau, also called Auschwitz 2, was a couple of miles down the road. If Auschwitz is like a museum, Birkenau is like a big empty graveyard. Bunk houses go as far as the eye can see, and where they end, chimneys from destroyed bunkhouses begin. Tens of thousands of inmates were housed here at a time, taking into account that those housed were the ones deemed healthy enough to work after the “sorting” upon their arrival. Those who were not went straight to one of Birkenau’s four gas chambers. We walk about a mile to get to the back of the camp, in order to view the gas chambers, all of which were destroyed when the camp was liberated by Russian forces. The prisoners themselves destroyed one of the four. As we observe the ruins of the gas chambers, we see deer feeding within the campgrounds. What a surreal juxtaposition of death and life, as we stand in front of the rubble of a gas chamber covered in snow, under the setting sun. We tour the camp for about another hour, visiting a memorial constructed by the liberating Russians, the sauna where healthy inmates actually did shower and get disinfected upon arrival, and a female barrack. The sun sets as we do so, and our long walk back to the bus is in the dark. As we ride back to Krakow, people are pensive at first, but relax increasingly more as the bus continues to move. Everyone is emotionally drained, and tomorrow we will visit the Majdanek concentration camp in Lublin, almost five hours away by bus. We will need our rest.

Berlin Sunday 2.15 & Monday 2.16

After a quick walk and a subway ride, we were at the Reichstag. They have an extremely through security check there, but once you have made it through security, the German Parliamentary building is remarkably open to visitors. We toured several interesting exhibits within the building. One was a room with crew boats hung from the ceiling, which rise and fall irregularly to represent the fluctuating nature of politics. Another was a section of corridor where the walls were covered with Russian graffiti, left by soldiers when they took the capital in 1945. There is also a hallway with the name of every member of the German parliment who was murdered or disappeared by the Nazi party in the late 30's and early 40's. One square in the display is black, representing all the members whose fate is unknown. Following this site, we were able to sit in the room where the German parliment currently meets, and votes on bills. The German crest, which was a very intimidating eagle with large talons pre World War 2, now resembles a far less threatening "fat chicken" according to our tour guide. Following our tour, we went up in the tower on top of the building for some beautiful panoramic views of the city of Berlin.
After lunch, we went to the monument to the murdered jews of Europe. This is one city block filled with granite blocks resembling tombstones turned on their sides. There are one person wide paths between the blocks, and as you walk between them you are filled with an eerie sense of disorientation. The ground is uneven underneath you, and varying amounts of light reach you as you pass stones of varying heights. One feels very uncomfortable while walking through, presumably as one who was taken away from their home to a concentration camp would have.
After walking through the memorial, we went belot it into the museum to the murdered Jews of Europe. This museum focuses on the personal records and stories of Jews taken to the concentration camps. A story that particularly resonated with me was that of a Polish family, who's wedding photo was displayed in the museum along with information about their family. The picture of the bride, groom, and their families, was taken in 1940. By 1942 more than half of the people in the picture had been murdered at Aushiwitz and Birkenau. I was married less than two years ago myself; if my history had followed the same path as theirs, I would be in a concentration camp now. The people in the picture looked very happy and proud, but that was not to last.
After the museum, we took a walking "Third Reich" tour of Berlin, where we saw artifacts including the site of Hitler's bunker, the former office of the Nazi Minister of Propoganda, and lots of post World War 2 arcitecture. Our somewhat frigid tour culminated at the remaining section of the Berlin wall, and then the informative and simultaneously campy Berlin wall museum.
Our next experience was anything but campy. We traveled to the Berlin Underwelten, which is a preserved bunker that was utilized during World War 2, and was kept up in anticipation of nuclear attack during the cold war. Our guide brought us through the underground maze of bunk rooms, electric/manual ventilation systems, and a very special scheizenhaus. A particularly surreal moment on theis tour was when we exited a room in the bunker and stepped out into an active Uban station. What a relief to leave, even for a couple of minutes the cold, cramped confines of the bunker. I can't imagine what would be like to live there for weeks and weeks.
Following our tour of the Berlin Underweltin, we took in some more history above ground. The highlight of teh afternoon was the Pergamon museum. This is a giant Hellenistic sculpture and temple that was excavated and returned brick by brick from Turkey. The piece is so large that it was assembled outside, and then had a museum built around it. After some more touring, we returned to our hotel to warm up, eat dinner, and prepare for the next stage of our journey.
At the end of our time in Berlin we had seen a lot. Memorials, museums, tours and artifacts are all pieces of Germany's history leading up to and including the events of World War 2, and ultimately, the Holocaust. It has been, and wil be, our job to put these pieces together into a cohesive, if incomplete, understanding of the events surrounding the Holocaust. Next, in Poland, we will visit some of the sites where it happened.

Pictures are included in the Berlin album.

Berlin Saturday 2.14

All of the planning and orginization helped us get on our cross-Atlantic flight, but they didn't help much with the lack of sleep. A bumpy commuter flight from Paris to Berlin was full of sleepy travelers. Once we landed in Berlin, we were greeted by Julie, our fifth chaperone and a BLS alum from the class of 03. We also met Tom, our tour guide. Tom brought us, via double decker bus, throughout the city of Berlin.
Berlin is an interesting city on many levels. A lot of it was destroyed in World War 2, so much of the city has a very modern feel to it. Furthermore, it is extremely spread out, so despite being the capital of Germany, with 3.4 million people living within city limits (344 square miles), you never feel that cramped.
Tom brought us by the Olympic stadium, which was busy with the heated Berlin-Munich soccor game going on, and also to many arcitectural sites. The first time that we got off of our tour bus was in Gruenwald, at Gleis (platform) 17. Gruenwald is a suburb of Berlin, which reminds me quite a bit of Wellsley MA. It has lots of trees and shrubs, big well kept houses, nice little resteraunts near the train platform, and things of the sort. The town is idyllic. However, Gris 17 was a point from which, beginning in the early 1940's, Jews were sent to concentration camps throughout Eastern Europe, including Auschwitz. What did the people of the community think and do? How did they rationalize the fact that hundreds of unwarrented death sentences were essentially given in their town?
Rationalization is a powerful instinct; I can imagine that people went about their days without dwelling on the horrible consequences of what it meant for a shipping point for the concentration camps to be in their town. The success of the Nazi uprising and system of concentation camps relied on this; not only must hundreds of thousands actively participate in genocide, but millions must be silent, and allow it to go on. Memorials at the site include plaques identifying the number of people on all of the train cars leading to concentration camps, trees which intentionally grow up through the tracks, and an eerie, unsettling memorial, in which angular figures cut out of a huge slab of rock seem to march to their doom.
From Gruenwald, Tom brought us into the center of Berlin, where we saw some other historical sites including Brandernberg gate, Deutsche bank, and Hotel Aldon, where Michael Jackson dangled his baby son Blanket by one of his feet in front of a crowd of reporters. After a long tour, we checked into our hotel, went out for a dinner of weinerschnitzel, and turned in for a night of much needed sleep.

All of my pictures from Berlin are in the album below. Click on it to see them all. Comments will follow

EE Berlin

A well oiled machine...

Organization is pretty important when you are coordinating forty six students and four chaperons getting a busy after school neighborhood to the airport with tickets, and through security between the end of the school day and five o clock. It helps to have a system for keeping
track of passports:













so that you can safely board your plane:
















and take pictures!














Once we got to Paris, we had a bit of a hike to get to our terminal:

n














But we made it to Berlin on time. So far, so good.

Preparations...

Before the trip goes off, we start here. In less than two weeks, we leave for Eastern Europe. Thanks to the planning and connections of Judi Freeman, the fearless leader, we have a big itinerary in front of us. By we I mean myself, four other chaperones, and 46 high school juniors and seniors. As for our itinerary; we are traveling to Berlin, Krakow, and Prague. Along with many museums, memorials, and historical sites, we will be visiting concentration camps in Auschwitz, Majdanek, and Terezin.

Personally, there are a lot of things that I am looking to gain from this trip. Eastern Europe is not a place that I had ever considered visiting, so it will be great to travel there with a healthy mix of first time travelers and more knowledgeable, worldly folks. We are, however, not just heading over to see castles and art museums. We are going to visit sites of some of the worst atrocities in modern history. What will this mean for the worldview of the members of our group? Is this going to be a life changing event for all involved, or will it fade into the past when it is done? The trip is associated with Judi's Facing History course which, according to the program's website, sets out to allow students to link the past to moral choices today. I am eager to be part of this experience, both personally, and as a teacher.

The teacher part of my life has all played out at Boston Latin School. BLS is an excellent school, with wonderful students, many of whom go on to do great things. However, my day to day interactions with students are often very rushed, structured, and incomplete. In order to teach science to my (140ish) students, efficiency is key. Class starts when the bell rings, and every minute is managed. On one hand, good learning science needs structure, and I believe that in order to be effective I need to exercise a certain amount of control over the scope and focus of discovery in my classroom. On the other hand, things can often be lost in the shuffle. Teachable moments may pass because we have to continue class to finish an experiment that is time-sensitive, or because the term is ending in a week. I am looking forward to the trip environment where, although we have very definite places to be, the learning objectives are less definite. Everyone's reactions to what we see and where we go will fall along a vast continuum of reactions and lessons. I am not the most knowledgeable chaperone on this trip for sure, but I am looking forward to sharing in a collective learning experience that is, for me at least, much less clearly defined.

That is, however, in the future. Current pressing needs are packing, purchasing lots of snacks and cold medicine, and practicing German, Polish, and Czech phrases.