Wednesday, April 20, 2011

Day 9 - Part II - Auschwitz

Our time in Auschwitz actually began last night, when we entered the town, passing by Auschwitz I, which is now a museum, and also passing through Auschwitz III, the industrial complexes of Monowitz and Buna. The hotel is just down the street. The town center is just down the street. It is impossible to believe that anyone who lived here during World War II can say they didn't know what was happening in these camps.





Also staying at our hotel is Stuart Abrams, a United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Teacher Fellow colleague of Bonnie Sussman, Colleen Tambuscio and Lisa Bauman, traveling here with 18 students from Avon High School in Connecticut. After dinner in the lovely Bavarian feeling hotel restaurant, our historian, Shalmi Barmore, gave an introduction to Auschwitz to both groups of students. How surreal, to be seated in a beautiful restaurant at Osweicim (Auschwitz), listening to Shalmi connect the rise of the Nazi party in Berlin and the Wannssee Conference to the killing factories in Poland. The Nazi party, who from the moment they gained power in Germany, included an anti-Jewish platform, never dreamed of the barbarian conclusion of their antisemitism.



The night sky is clear as we walk back to our hotel rooms after dinner, to try to sleep before our long day tomorrow.




















6 comments:

  1. Everything you all described about Auschwitz was so interesting. I think if I had been there it would have been so surreal and emotional, I can't even imagine going through and walking where so many Jews once walked and where many of them died. I wish I could be there with you all, it sounds like you're having a great time!

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  2. It must be hard to go to sleep thinking about what the group is going to see tomorrow. The history of what happened there is so big and now it's a museum. A museum seems like a good way to let people know about what really happened there.

    It would be hard for me to eat dinner at a place near where all of the horrible murders happened. I would have to think about something else while I was eating. I'm sure this is a fun trip.
    -Dashawn Harden

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  3. Its amazing that everyone that lived or stayed close to there must have know what was happening, yet so few people did anything.
    -Daniel Ecklund

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  4. So many lives lost, uh its probably a surreal feeling in person going to Auschwitz as so much is known about this camp. Hope you are enjoying the experience few people will ever see the sights you've ssen in there lifetime. Lucky

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  5. It must be a great experience being able to see Auschwitz. But knowing the history about the camp it must be tough knowing that millions of innocent lives were lost there. Auschwitz is a place I would love to visit after learning some of the history of the Holocaust.

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  6. We have been watching that movie in class about Auschwitz and how it came to be. Being in the actual camp must have been a life changing experience. Standing around the gas chambers that thousands of Jews were killed in must have been terrifying!
    -Ally Weyers

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