By Taralyn Wiley
Today started out with pretty good weather with a little cold breeze as we traveled to the memorial of the gypsies and the homosexuals.
It opens one’s mind to the knowledge of the killing of not only the Jews, but also other groups.
The sites are very simple, but the students connected with the hard past. Silence came over the entire site.
We walked to the memorial of the killing of the European Jews, from the outside it can be seen as a bunch of random concrete blocks with no writing.
We were then asked by our tour guide to walk through the memorial and have our own experience. Some felt cramped, locked in, or even the feeling of being powerless. The odd levels and the ground falling and rising bring a new feeling at every turn.
The next journey was a tour of the numerous memorials spread across the city of Berlin, Germany, from the emotional sight of track 17 where most of the deportation of the Jews happened to the Jewish community center.
There were a lot of different feelings. At one moment we are all happy eating breakfast in a small café, and then we were introduced to what life must have been like for a Holocaust victim.
This is beginning to be an unforgettable experience.
It’s important to note that word “gypsy” is EXTRMELY offensive. Please consider changing it to the correct and not derogatory phrase “Sinti and Roma people.”