DAY 63, SATURDAY, MARCH 16TH
Today at 8:15 AM I met up with my Holocaust and Genocide class in the city to start our class short study tour this weekend! We met to take our bus for the weekend to drive to Hamburg, Germany! It was about a 4 hour bus ride and we took a 45 min ferry from Denmark to Germany. The bus ride went successfully and we arrived at our first stop- the Bullenhuser Damm Memorial. During WW2 this building was used as a subcamp of the Neungamme concentration camp that is outside of Hamburg. In 1945 as the prisoners were being transferred out of the school it was needed for something else. A doctor was performing medical experiments on a group of 20 children in Auschwitz, including contamination them with TB, and the Nazis needed to cover this up so they decided to kill the children. So at the Bullenhuser school these 20 children along with their 4 caretakers were murdered. It was a very impactful visit seeing how the kids are remembered and seeing the killing site. Some of the children’s families have still not been found. Our professor remarked how a site like this is so impactful because it gives stories behind the statistics, hearing the details and seeing the place of a horrific incident is often more touching than hearing the statistics of 6 million dead- it’s harder to understand the true effect of that statistic. I didn't photograph the visit but here's a picture of the building from the internet:
After that visit we headed to the hotel to check in and then we had a couple hours a free time. Me and my friend Maia walked around the city a bit seeing the canal/water area, the city hall, a WW1 memorial, and a "red light district"-like area.
Then the class met up for a delicious three course meal! For dessert we had Rote Grütze which is fruit pudding with vanilla sauce which is commonly eaten in northern Germany. Unfortunately we're not having any other German food while we're here :(. After dinner me and two others decided to go to Miniatur Wunderland which is basically a giant display of models of several different cities and countries. It was incredible and spanned several rooms but every individual table/exhibit was so detailed. Each tiny person was unique and perfectly placed with a purpose- not just put there!
After that we headed back to the hotel and slept!
DAY 64, SUNDAY, MARCH 17TH
Woke up today and had a small breakfast in the hotel before meeting with the class at 9:15. Our first stop was Nicolai Kirche (St. Nicolai church) in the city. The ruins of this church have been left as is, as a memorial for war and violence. During WW2, the city of Hamburg was bombed by allied force and since this church was easily seen from above (at the time it had the highest bell tower in Northern Europe), it and the area around it was targeted even though there was no Nazi military presence here. Hamburg was completely leveled by this bombing in 1943 and over 35,000 civilians were killed by the bombings and the fire that consumed the city. However Germans aren’t comfortable thinking of themselves of victims in this war so that is why it memorializes war and violence rather than the German victims. In the grounds there also was a statue of a young man completely solemn, hunched over representing the total and complete devastation and loss felt by Hamburg and it’s people. However, the boy is sitting on bricks that were made in the concentration camp near Hamburg. It shows the general attitude Germans have about the time period and how to remember it. The bell tower has an elevator in it and is open to visitors to take an elevator up near the top to get a view of the city so the class did that together and got a great view!
After we finished up we jumped back on the bus and headed to brunch! Around the corner from brunch we stopped at my professor’s favorite Holocaust memorial. It is Stolpersteins (or stumbling stones), they are in the ground (the same size/shape of a cobblestone so they perfectly fit into the ground and don’t stand out too much) in front of a home or office where a Jewish victim of the Holocaust lived or worked. The stones list basic information including, if available; the name, DOB, date and location of deportation, and date and location of death. Our professor loves this memorial because it demands something of the viewers- you have to look down and notice and be aware of them- they aren’t in your face.
After our professor showed us on the stones, we headed into restaurant and ate a decent buffet brunch. After brunch we got back on the bus to head to Neungamme concentration camp- about 30 min outside of Hamburg. The camp was relatively empty and had an almost eerie feeling with the sun partly shining, lots of grass, and birds chirping. The city of Hamburg used the grounds of this concentration camp as a prison for many years as to keep people away from the site and not claim relation to the horrible atrocities that occurred there- thus there is not too much left standing. Having our professor, an expert in the subject area and the camp, walking us around was invaluable as it really would not have been the same experience without. The prisoners here suffered some of the worse conditions and the highest death rate for any concentration camp due to the weather and type of work done by the prisoners here. Here is some more information on the camp: https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/neuengamme
There were also two exhibits inside that we spent an hour looking at- got to see a little more there as well.
After about 3 total hours at the camp we headed back to the bus to head home!
One of the funniest moments of the trip was when we got off the ferry crossing into Denmark and were at border control and the officer walked on our bus, started checking the first couple passports, looked back at the rest of the bus, and said “nah” and got off the bus. I eventually made it home by 9:30 and just showered and went straight to bed!
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