Author: habbart.1

Berlin

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Language translations between English and other languages have been difficult, especially the word laundry, but the translation for race in German is interesting. While at the German Historical Museum, Lauren Henry, our class instructor, told a few of us students why race was uncommon to talk about in Europe. She had learned that the word “race” in German means “breed” so it is weird to talk about race because they only refer to it when talking about dogs or other animals breeding. Regarding World War II, it makes it even clearer that when the Nazis wanted an Aryan (white, blonde, blue-eyed people) race, they saw humans as animals to breed. That is why they tried to remove the unwanted characteristics by their own selection.

I am very passionate about Gay rights issues so I was excited that across from the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe there was a modern memorial for the gay people that were in concentration camps. The memorial was supposed to remember the gay people that were never freed from the camps and were thrown straight into prison after the war since being gay was still not socially acceptable. When looking at the memorial it was completely underwhelming. It was a concrete block with no signs or plaques anywhere explaining what it was for. On one side was a little window which you could peer inside to watch a video. The video was just of lesbian and gay couples today interacting and it felt like we were watching into their personal lives. I did not like it because it felt like gay people were to be watched and had no connection to the many horrors they faced from a non tolerant society.

We went to the Wannsee House and the German-Russian Museum as a great conclusion for the study abroad and of the war itself. The Wannsee House hosted the Nazi conference in January 1942 that “decided” to mass exterminate the Jewish population. Decided is in quotes because some people believe that it was always the intent of Hitler and certain individuals to kill the Jews while other believe it was decided at this conference after multiple methods such as deportation were no longer an option. The Berlin Senate would not allow the house to become a memorial or exhibition until the 1980s even though Holocaust survivor Joseph Wulf pushed for this initiative starting in 1965. Even if it took them awhile to recognize this house, the German-Russian Museum had no issues with pointing out the German’s faults during the war. This Museum houses the room where the Russians made the Germans sign a second peace treaty after they had already signed first peace treaty with Britain and America to end the war. Another part of the museum is a drawn picture of the Soviets taking over the Reichstag in Berlin. The Reichstag is the government building of Berlin where the Soviets thought Hitler was located but actually it was a converted hospital during the war and when they attacked the building they were in fact attacking a hospital. It was interesting to see that they had a painting in a museum showing this without giving this background knowledge because essentially the act hurt innocents and should not be glorified.

I just want to conclude by thanking everyone who reads these blogs or donates to the study abroad for scholarships. This was an amazing experience. Thank you.

Poland

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Poland is such an amazing country and after being there I hope to go again next summer. The hotel we stayed at was fantastic, I could go to a 24 hour pierogi place, and I went gallivanting looking for street art in the Jewish Quarter.

The events we did in Poland were stirring. We went to the Schlinder Museum and I was shocked by the layout. After a few minutes in the museum, I reached a room with Nazi flags from ceiling to a little above the floor. I was frozen because I have only seen Nazi flags on walls in museums and this forced me to walk through them. I ended up waiting for another student to walk through with me. I can’t believe the Poles and French had to walk through these flags and had this fear passing by them. Eventually another section had large walls that matched the walls of the Warsaw Ghetto. They looked like tombstones and a few quotes within the section talked about how the tombstones were eerily showing that they would be dead there. One quote made me burst into tears. “The ghetto has four huge gates. And through these gates we are not allowed. It is strictly prohibited. The no. 3 tram passes up and down the main street. We are not allowed on the tram. It is strictly prohibited either. That is why the tram never stops in the ghetto […]. Once a boy tossed few loaves of bread through a tram window to our feet.” This quote sounds normal till you see that it is attributed to “Roma Liebing, aged 5.” Sometimes you can forget how innocent the children were that had to go through this. That they didn’t know why they couldn’t ride the tram, go out the gates, or be like the little boy. The museum overall made me uncomfortable and sad and this was probably the most effective museum in understanding the pain and sorrow the population underwent.

Auschwitz I and Auschwitz II- Birkenau were very emotional places and I don’t think I can address all of the emotions. I did want to address my anger at certain peoples’ actions of disrespect in both locations. In Auschwitz I I saw couples take selfies and people take photos in areas where it specifically says no photos. I was sickened by the camp and already wanted to go back to the hotel. We headed to Auschwitz II- Birkenau. While crossing the street to head in, a car speeding down the road almost hit one of our study tour members, Patrick O’Connor. I walked out behind the car to cross the road and saw four white males in their late twenties in the car laughing. All of a sudden, the man in the back left corner did the Nazi salute and all the men cracked up and drove away. I still cannot believe that they would do such an action outside of a concentration camp where hundreds of thousands of people were killed. My faith in humanity was questioned at that moment because people find if funny to do things such as that.

France

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Bayeux

I was the first to get hurt on the trip. Five feet out of our Bayeux hotel my ankle just gave out and twisted. While everyone went to explore, Chris Herrel and Michele Magoteaux stayed in with me. Our accompanying grad student, Lauren, took me to the pharmacy and I got a first hand view of the medical system.

The Musee du Debarquement de Utah Beach was surprising because it contained a Native American case about the Comanche code talkers. The Comanche code talkers were a group of Native Americans who mixed coding and the Comanche language into cryptic messages for the Americans. It was the only code to not be broken. None of the museums to this date had discussed other races so this was a shock especially being Native myself. The first code from Utah Beach on June 6, 1944 was a Comanche transmission that “the landing is going well” or “Tsaaku nunnuwee.”

We went to the American cemetery. I was going to see my one great uncle’s tombstone that resides in the cemetery. His name is Julio Romero. He was a second division, 23rd regiment infantry soldier and died on July 27, 1944. It was a coincidence that another WWII study tour student, Chris Herrel, had his great great uncle buried there and was in the same regiment as Julio. One looming question is why only one of my great uncles was buried at Normandy and the other was sent back (Epimenio died the same month in battle.) We learned at the museum it was at the wishes of the next of kin, but my grandmother says her family was alerted of both deaths at the same time so it doesn’t make sense why one was sent home. I don’t know if I can talk too much about my great uncle’s death. It is still a very emotional matter for my family. I sent a photo of Julio’s tomb stone to my mother and she almost cried. I was very fortunate to get into this program and to get a scholarship to be able to see my family but I felt like the cemetery was not enough. While taking a diversity art class at Ohio State I saw a boot installation from an artist that had all the military boots with dog tags and photos of the soldiers or marines. I think it would have been nice to have the grave stones being more personal or individualized to show the individual cost. It personally feels like the cemetery neglects the pain and toil of Americans during the war. We look at Britain and they were bombed during the Blitz, France was occupied by the Germans, and the Germans lost the war, but for America it seems like they came in to save the day and the American population did not have a terrible experience. My family had a bad experience and it has affected us till this day. I do not feel comfortable sharing everything on a public blog, but this was very impactful for me. The next day the group went to see a movie with screens surrounding the room. After seeing my uncle’s grave the previous day I kept thinking that he could be in the videos of the battles and could have been seeing the horrors. Everything felt more real since it could have been my family, my great uncles.

Paris

In the Musee de l’armee, the integration of different nationalities and races within the French army was the stand-out issue when compared to race-issues from America and World War II. Moroccan soldiers fought for France during World War II and for many soldier’s this was the first time they had seen the empires’ main land. Germany had previous colonial African interests and had fought against the French for Morocco in the late 19th century. Had Germany had a more successful or prioritization of colonial Africa, would being Aryan matter less? In my book report on Soldiers of Destruction by Charles Sydnor, the SS Totenkompfdivision fired on surrendering Moroccan soldiers because of their race, but accepted surrender from white French soldiers. If Germany had a stronger colonial presence and citizenship as did France then there might have been a change in events but to what extent we shall never know. It is just a topic I never considered until this museum.

London

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London
I arrived in London on May 8th. We did a quick walk around seeing Buckingham Palace. On May 9th we began our World War II journey with Churchill’s War Rooms. Within the museum, there were multiple weird facts about the glorified man that is Churchill. He mainly would talk and answer phones from the bathrooms and he had a reddish-purple velvet boiler onesie. Even with these oddities, Churchill was very important to the People’s War. He became a symbol of strength and he frequently went out of his bomb shelter to show the people he was not afraid.

May 10th was the free day. I utilized it by going to the British museum, cartoon museum, HMS Belfast, London Tower exhibition, and All Hallows exhibition. I want to focus on the HMS Belfast because I did not know much about the ship until taking my audio tour. HMS Belfast was one of the first warships to open fire on D-Day, June 6, 1944. The Belfast fought for five weeks until July 8th, helping the allied troops to go inland against the Germans. A funny little fact was that the ship was first diverted to Portland Naval base to pick up Winston Churchill who wanted to see the bombardment first hand. King George VI and the ship’s commander convinced him not to because the stress it would put upon the sailors and the mission.

May 11th we went to Bletchley Park which was one of the main reasons why I wanted to go on this study abroad. Alan Turing is a very famous gay man who broke the enigma code with his machine. Anti-Semitism, homophobia, and xenophobia plagued the western world during and after the war. Since Turing’s achievements were hidden from the police and the general public until the 1980s, Turing was imprisoned for being a gay man. His sentence was female hormone therapy which led to him killing himself in 1954 at the age of 41. Turing’s life shows how devoted the people were to keeping war secrets and how everyone became normal after the war. Turing could have tried to tell them that he was the man who solved the enigma or contacted higher ups but he didn’t. It was heartbreaking he gave so much to Britain during the war just to be condemned later. On a happier note, I tried Indian curry for the first time because I heard London had really good Indian and Bangladeshi food. I got chicken tikka masala and it was tasty.

May 12th we went to the Imperial War Museum which was created after World Way I. The museum was hit twice by bombs in World War II. I was drawn more to the headwear sections of the exhibits. In the World War I section, I learned that the first metal helmets were made by John Brodie but they flawed because the shine gave away their positions. They changed the process by adding sand or sawdust before the paint creating a non-reflective surface. This decreased head injuries by 75 percent. Helmets in World War II were used both in battle and at home. The British men wore the metal hats as fireman, policeman, doctor, etc. The women were not left out. They bought scarves to protect their hair from machines working during the war and a lot of the scarves were printed with propaganda on them. After the museum we were free to do anything. I got fish and chips from a place called Fishcotheque. Then I went to the Fan Museum, Cutty Sark Museum, and concluded with a Jack the Ripper Tour. I really loved the Jack the Ripper tour because our tour guide had a lot of personality, was a BBC historian on the matter, and also worked at the Scotland yard museum. Unlike the other tour guides we passed, she brought photos of the different women murdered and some were ones she had just found or came from the historian committee. We saw a photo of a victim when she was alive (the only one ever found), learned that the doctor that Hollywood says did it was over 70 years old and not in England during the time, and that the name Jack the Ripper comes from a letter a news journalist sent to the police pretending to be the killer. I found it very informational and interesting.

Next: France