An evening walk around the Jewish quarter

A long day ended with a walk around the Jewish quarter of Berlin. Students heard stories of Otto Weidt, the Aryan women who protested against the deportation of their Jewish husbands, and the events of Kristallnacht. 

Students also saw the moving memorial to Jewish victims of the Holocaust on Grosse Hamburgerstrasse.

The German Resistance Museum

A chance to learn about resistance movements including the White Rose movement and the participants in the July Bomb plot.

The Olympic Stadium

Also on Friday afternoon we visited the Olympic Stadium built for the 1936 Olympics. The Germans topped the medal table provided great propaganda for Hitler's nationalist views. Although the success of Jesse Owens challenged some Nazi ideology.

Plotzensee Memorial Prison

After lunch, we paid a brief visit to the Plotzensee Memorial prison. During the Third Reich over 2800 people were killed - including members of the Red Orchestra and later many of those found guilty of being part of the July Bomb Plot.

Families of those killed were invoiced to pay for the cost of the execution and even to cover the expense of the stamp for the letter informing them of their loved ones death.

Sachsenhausen

An emotional morning was spent at Sachsenhausen. The Nazi concentration camp was constructed in 1936 and over the next nine years over 200,000 people were held within its walls. These included political prisoners, asocials, Jews (who were rounded up after Kristallnacht) and later Soviet prisoners of war.

Our first day in Berlin!

Hello everyone!

Well everyone is pretty exhausted. Not only did we get to school at 3.00am... But we have been out all day on an epic history tour.

We got a coach from the airport to our hotel, dropped off our bags and set out on our tour of the city.

We started at the German History Museum where we had a guided tour on the Weimar Republic and the early years of the Third Reich.

Then we went on the first walking tour - one memorable spot was Bebelplatz which was the site of one of the largest Nazi book burnings. As one philosopher said - "where you first burn books, one later burns humans".