Classrooms Without Borders (CWB) inaugurated its Berlin/Prague Seminar for educators, accompanied by local students, this June.
Despite an airport strike in Paris that caused the group to lose a day, participants arrived in Berlin in high spirits, prepared to hit the ground running. Through the expert educational teamwork of CWB Executive Director Dr. Tsipy Gur, CWB scholar-in-residence Avi Ben-Hur and a local German guide, the group rapidly engaged the historical minefield of this city.
The seminar provided personal encounters with present-day Germany, as well as visits to the Topography of Terror, Wansee, the Olympic Stadium, Brandenburg Gate, a wide range of Holocaust memorials (including memorials to homosexual and Roma/Sinti victims of the Nazi regime), Checkpoint Charlie and various superb museums.
The director of the Museum of the Topography of Terror met with Seminar participants, along with the head of the institution’s educational department. On Friday night of the trip, the teachers and students gathered with one of the leaders of the Jewish community in Berlin, the rabbi and professor Dr. Andreas Nachama. Afterwards, the group participated in the Sabbath service at a Reform synagogue, followed by a dinner with members of the Jewish community.
The seminar participants also benefited from a lecture by a former German parliament member, Karsten D. Voigt, who presented a critical German view of the U.S., Israel and Germany today. His interpretation of U.S. policies stimulated a lot of conversation within the group, particularly about attitudes towards freedom of speech in the United States as compared to Germany.
One of the interesting encounters with history occurred in the heart of Berlin, adjacent to Checkpoint Charlie. One of the participating teachers, Christie Naragon, was shocked to see a photograph and description of one of her relatives in an open exhibition. He was an iconic figure in Berlin, having been shot attempting to escape from East to West and left to bleed to death in the no-man’s land between the two parts of the city. Christie had no idea just how symbolic her relative was during the dark days of the Cold War in Berlin.
After spending a fascinating day touring Dresden, the group entered the Czech Republic. The first place visited was the infamous Terezin (or Theresienstadt) ghetto, where most of Czech, German and Austrian Jewry were sent en route to their final destination – Auschwitz. At Terezin, Dr. Dagmar Lieblova, a Jewish Czech survivor, guided the group through the ghetto and told her personal story of survival. The participants were rapt, listening intently to the hour-long testimony. What was perhaps most heartening and surprising was the positive attitude and energy displayed by the 85-year-old Czech survivor. Later on during the seminar in Prague, she and her husband joined the group for lunch and interacted with everyone on a more intimate level.
Prague was a Disneyland, full of spectacular Renaissance and Baroque architecture, beautiful churches, synagogues and castles. The intense heat did not deter the participants from maximizing their learning experience. One evening, a young Jewish scholar, Martin Schmok, had dinner with the group, laying out some of the more shocking aspects of life in Czechoslovakia during the Communist regime, with an emphasis on the Jewish experience.
After an intensive seven-day seminar, teachers and other participants began the long journey of processing what they had learned and what they could do with the experience, both in the classroom and in their lives.
“This trip goes way beyond museum maps and memorial plaques. It was a journey into diverse and thought-provoking ideas, with extended conversation over meals and on the bus – intense inquiry all day long. Now I can share ideas, projects, resources and lesson plans with a whole new network of fellow history teachers. This trip made history personal for me, and it encouraged our group – and, by extension, our students – to not just learn but to take action in the world.”
— Christie Knable, teacher, Sewickley Academy
“My initial expectations were already high, and my actual experience reached far beyond those expectations. It was an intense itinerary that enabled us to have a true experience of various cultures in Europe. The most impactful experience on the Berlin/Prague trip was meeting with the Holocaust survivor. Her firsthand account of her time in Terezin and Auschwitz will stay with me forever and I am eager to incorporate her story in my curriculum year after year. I would highly recommend the CWB opportunities to my colleagues and students. CWB has given me the opportunity to grow to a higher level both as an educator and as an individual in a way that I could not have reached on my own.”
— Marcus J. Croley, social studies teacher, Valley School of Ligonier