Stephen’s Travels

In the summer of 2005, I had the unique opportunity to travel throughout Germany, Poland, and Czech Republic with a tour called the “Holocaust Remembrance Tour”. Given that I had just studied the Holocaust the previous semester, the tour was a marvelous way to experience history and tragedy in a more personal and firsthand way. The tours were very draining physically and mentally, the most heavy hitting being the memorial at Lidice. Given the serious nature of this particular location, and the trip as a whole, one might expect a high level of tact, much more so than normal. This, however, was not the case on this occasion.

As I recall, we had just taken some time walking around the memorial grounds in Lidice. After a brief walk from the memorial to the temporary visitors center, we found ourselves waiting outside for several minutes in the cool mist while the previous tour group cleared out. I don’t even remember what the next comment was regarding, but one member of our group was a bit frustrated with the circumstances and compared our tour leader (Iain, bless his heart!) to Hitler. Sigh.

Perhaps I was just extra emotional that day, but I’d say that such a comment was out of line at that time or any other time. It really bummed me out.

Well I am sorry to anyone that was actually looking forward to more pictures. I completely forgot to update again once I returned to the states. The plane ride was awesome, I even got a window seat. The only problem was that it had no window. Much like this:


Anyways, I’ve uploaded all of my pictures to my Flickr account so click here to view them!

I will hopefully be uploading more pictures the next couple days. The connection I am currently on keeps disconnecting me at the most unopportune times. Anyhow, I will be updating one more time before I get home this coming monday.

Pictured: Shoes recovered from the labor camp Dora-Mittelbau

After an early rise we headed out to Buchenwald; a concentration camp located in Germany. I will not go into any details about this camp.

We also made our way to Dora-Mittelbau which was a camp built to produce V-2 Rockets. Of course, slave labor was used in all aspects of construction. The interesting thing about this camp is the fact that the factory itself if underground in a complex dug out of rock. We were unable to go inside because there were no guides available today.

Tonight we made our way to downtown Hannover via train. I was really reluctant to go, but Chris convinced me. The reason for my reluctance was because for the first time I was really disoriented. Anyways, Chris, Robyn, Roxi, and myself went and had some coffee in a nice cafe.