When our seminar group arrived back in the United States two weeks ago, I grabbed my suitcase at baggage claim, hopped in my car and quickly returned home for a restful night’s sleep after ten days of tremendous activity, historical questioning, and once in a lifetime experiences. I spent the next few days readjusting to Pittsburgh time, summer schedules, and enjoying a certain level of independence that exists when traveling without thirty other individuals. I uploaded my pictures and videos, shared stories of my travels with friends and family, and then arrived in a place where I began to write down ways I hope to use events from this trip in my sixth grade world history classroom.
I found myself returning to questions focused on the concept of historical legacies. Several of the seminar’s guiding questions have begun to shape my emerging curriculum. “How is Berlin haunted by its past and how is German society trying to mold a future grappling with that past? Can there be reconciliation? Between whom? How does Germany take responsibility for its past?” These questions were on my mind throughout the trip. As we visited each and every site, I was constantly pondering the significance of conflicting legacies. What is the value in preserving a place of hate? What is the average take away from sites such as the Wansee Villa, the Olympic Stadium, Terezin, and others? How do you choose what to preserve, what to destroy, and what to reuse. At the Topography of Terror Museum we saw how former SS sites of imprisonment had been reused to create an educational site that engendered awareness of the decisions and events of Nazi Germany. However, across the street, on the other side of a remaining section of the Berlin Wall, we saw a renovated Nazi government building. This building currently houses a government agency. The challenges of reclaiming the infrastructure of Nazi Germany struck me as a difficulty I had not previously questioned. In Dresden, we saw a city rebuilt from complete destruction following WWII. How do you move forward from a history of hate, while not only maintaining, but rebuilding structures from this regime? Terezin was another example of this; a former ghetto half preserved as a museum and half functioning as a small village. Where is the potential for reconciliation and where is the hope of coexistence and mutual respect across cultural divisions when this ghetto itself remains a contradiction?
Moving towards the upcoming school year, I will carry these questions and others with me. Whether I am discussing the continual use of the 1936 Olympic Stadium for soccer games and concerts, commenting on the architectural observers of the Jewish Museum rather than actual museum visitors, or recognizing the juxtaposition of the Holocaust Memorial in Berlin with the Reichstag and the American Embassy, I find that these contractions of historical legacies will foster meaningful learning for students and myself. This place of discomfort – where practicality often rubs against notions of disrespect, is such a powerful place of learning. One final thought in studying these ideas; What does it mean to live in a present suffused by the past and how does history become part of one’s resources for building a meaningful identity and life?