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

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.

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.

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.

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:

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