Author: grim.92

Last Stop: The Present

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After traveling across Berlin for the past week, it was easy to get a feel for the city and its rich history. While walking through the different museums, it was startling to see the language used to articulate the atrocities of the past. In the previous countries we toured, such as France and Poland, they were less explicit in their language describing their involvement with the Third Reich. One example is the Topography of Terror Museum, where they had a photo of notorious SS Officers during a retreat with a caption explaining they were “Taking a break from mass murder.” The bluntness of the speech is shocking and I believe that is the intention. It is clear that the museum had written the passages to stay with the visitors and learn from the lessons of the past. This made me reflect on how Americans present our own history. It is unlikely to find text presented in museums that would describe our actions that bluntly in regards to our atrocities, such as slavery and the genocide of the Native Americans. It has made me reevaluate how Americans treat our own history and how we educate future generations.

 

To educate ourselves on the present, we visited the Reichstag building It was fascinating to see how the current government of Germany is run and designed on the principles of democracy. Our delightful tour guide explained the design of the Parliament chambers highlighting the focus on the democratic principle of putting the people first by allowing citizens to walk above the chamber in the large dome top. Our guide went on to explain the current distribution of power that has come from the aftermath of the Second World War. While our focus is in the past, it is important to see how the past can reverberate through time and still effect today. I could not help but draw ties between the German and American governments. In the United States, we pride ourselves on our democratic principles and serve as a model for other countries to follow. However, the presentation we received showed that Germany had taken the lessons of WWII and the Cold War and used those to create a democracy that actually works for the people and not to serve an elite.

 

Lastly, a common theme throughout this trip was that most people we encountered knew a basic level of English. When going to restaurants and museums, I was fearful that my lack of German skills would be an issue in communication. However, most people had enough English skills to make ordering easy. This got me thinking as to why it is that most people speak English and German in Germany. One possibility we discussed over breakfast was if Germany had won the war and successfully created a global superpower, then most people would have German as their first or second language, rather than English. Overall, the theme of our time in Berlin was that the actions of the past still affect us today and we can either learn from it or hide from it.

 

 

Inside the Reichstag building where the current Parliament meets.

Dumplings and Denial

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Krakow, Poland was the city I was least excited about going. However, after our first night, I fell in love with the architecture, food, and people. I spent a night in reflection on why it was that I was apprehensive about touring the Eastern European city, and the explanation was the knowledge of recent political shifts in the acknowledgment of the Holocaust. The Polish government’s recent decision to change the name of the concentration camps from Polish to German concentration camps, muting their complicity in the actions of the Germans. The rest of the time in Poland, I sought to understand why the current administration was eager to separate themselves.

In her report, my comrade Riley Sayers described the Polish people under occupation, she addressed the common collaboration with the occupied government during WWII. Riley addressed past collaboration with the perspective of the Poles who often only collaborated as a last resort for self-preservation under extreme war-time conditions. She cited Polish citizens who were starving to death and in a final act of desperation reported their Jewish neighbors in return for food. While this does not excuse those actions, it helps to understand the desperation of the Polish people better.

 

What surprised me most about being in Krakow was the lack of propaganda or public information about the recent changes regarding the Holocaust. Our last night in Krakow, I saw a post in the window of a side street. The poster was a graphic outline with Hitler saying “Death camps were Nazi German.” This was the only piece of propaganda that I came across on the issue. The more surprising nature was that it was written in English for the tourists of the city to see. The poster was a message from the Poles not to each other, but to the eyes of the world that it was not the Poles who committed such egregious acts against humanity.

 

The Schindler Museum presented the Polish view on the war and their treatment under occupation. The Museums went through the treatment of the Polish Jews and the Poles from the beginning of the occupation to the liberation of Poland from the Soviet Union at the end of the war. It told the horrific story of the treatment of their people and left me with even greater sympathy for the Polish people. The museum feeds into the narrative that the Poles were victims of the Germans, despite the acts of collaboration. After reading Neighbors by Jan Gross that recounted Polish citizens who participated in the murdering of their Jewish neighbors, the crimes Poles committed against each other are unforgettable. However, the museum added context and deeper understanding of the grave situation of the Poles.

 

I spent the past semester infuriated with how the current Polish nation can separate them self from their past crimes and collaboration with the Holocaust. The modern Poles, now a few generations apart, are able to separate themselves by the narrative of victimhood and separation in time. After touring Schindler’s factory, hearing from our tour guides at Auschwitz, and Riley’s site report, it is understandable that the Poles, exhausted from years of being associated with the horror of the Holocaust, would want to push the blame to solely the Germans. However, to deny the Polish complicity in the Holocaust is a dangerous step toward a complete re-writing of history.

 

 

Alternative French Facts

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Musée de L’Armée

The cliché that history is written by the victors of war appeared throughout our discussions before our departure to Europe. Now that we are here, I have found it important to filter all information for the biases each country has based on the experience of the country or current social and political reasons. As we navigated the different museums in France, The French had strategically worded their displays based on how they have recorded their history.

In particular, the museums enhanced the prevalence of the resistance movement in German-occupied France during the war. The Caen Memorial Museum claimed that France would have eventually freed itself from German rule without the help of the Allies. One passage said that although France fell so early in the war, their commitment to the resistance made them the equal victors as the United States and Britain. The literature we read prior to our departure never included that information nor gave enough evidence to support the alleged strength of the resistance movement. That is not to say that the information I was presented with did not include its own skewing of facts or biases. In addition, while at the Musée de L’Armée in Paris exaggerates the French involvement in Allied victories, while failing to mention any collaboration with the German deportation of French Jews to concentration camps.

While strolling through the Caen Memorial Museum, only a small plaque mentioned the Enigma code and gave credit to the Polish and some French code breakers, with no mention to the English code breakers at Bletchley Park. This information is not only biased but historically inaccurate. The French made little to no effort towards Enigma intelligence during the war. Considering the English were the most advanced code breakers, it is unfathomable that no information on their involvement would be mentioned. Of course, the French are not alone in misrepresenting Enigma, while at Bletchley Park in England the tour guide woefully understated the importance of Polish code breakers efforts towards breaking Enigma, instead giving mostly credit to English code breakers.

The French museums differed than other museums we had encountered in England however in how they addressed their own victimhood under the Germans. Much of the language alluded to Germany taking what they wanted from the French and holding the French captive in their own country. However, as was best demonstrated at Arromanches on the occupation and Allied liberation, the French were also the victims of their allies, Britain and the United States. The preparatory bombings prior to the invasion of France were necessary to ensure the break down of the German war machine. This left France in ruin and the French civilians in devastation. Mostly civilian lives, adults and children alike were lost in the bombings, leaving some tension between the Allies and the French who may have questioned the worth of the bombings.

 

The French museums in their recorded history skewed the facts to benefit national interests, such as separation from the horrors of the Third Reich. Yet, they also use their museums to bring about a different perspective than other Allied museums. The museums provide greater sympathy to all the lives devastated by the Allied bombing campaign to end the German war machine in France. The French museums are able to provide a different perspective than those from the other nations involved in the war who didn’t see the same level of destruction on their homeland. If I took any lesson away from France, it is that as historians it is important to filter everything we see for the potential biases they may hold for better or worse. In the future, I will be a more cognizant student of our own country’s reporting of history.

London and Living Legacies

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In the United States, WWII is viewed as a sort of abstraction, a point of national pride of great battles fought abroad. You must travel a considerable distance to find any memorial or monument in relation to the war. In London, the remnants of the war seem to thread throughout the very fabric of the city. There are the obvious places, such as the Imperial War Museum and Church Hill’s War Rooms, that have been expertly cultivated to preserve the history and glory of WWII to both the Londoners and its visitors.  Churchill’s War Rooms show that while many people found Churchill to be a difficult person to work with, they admired him greatly for his war-time strength. Many even credit Churchill and his strength for England winning the war. At Bletchley Park, the home of Ultra Intelligence,  the preservation of the park makes clear that the English were proud of this contribution to the war, even in a way that involved no direct fighting.

However, it did not take visiting a war-themed museum to see the narrative of the war that the Londoners hold. Walking down the streets, it was not uncommon to see a small monument honoring a person or group who demonstrated bravery either in the war or in the Blitz bombings. For example, on the way to St. Paul’s Cathedral, we crossed a monument of firefighters pointing up at the Cathedral from afar. The inscription informed us that the men being honored were firefighters who had lost their lives defending St. Paul’s under the Blitz bombings. Inside St. Paul’s, there is a plaque in honor of those who lost their lives during the war. In Westminister Abbey, there are entire wings that had been destroyed by the bombing that now hold memorials to the lives lost in the war and those who defended the country. Many restaurants, including the one we ate at on our last night in London, Churchill’s Arms, holds memorabilia from Churchill and his wartime achievements as the man who saved England.  It is evident in walking through the streets of London the great pride Londoners take in both their wartime efforts and their resilience. We got the great pleasure of meeting Michael Handscomb, a local who had lived through the Blitz bombings, and with the famous stiff-upper-lip, he recalled that he was not scared during the bombings, a point of pride. He recalled undergoing strict rationing that often left his family hungry but knew the importance of the rationing for the sake of the war effort. He still shares his story and in turn, the story of England during WWII, to continue to inform the future generations of the hardships they endured for the sake of an allied victory. It was evident not only in the museums and monuments, but in the locals we chatted with about our studies, that WWII was not just a historical epoch, but a part of what it means to be English.