Three Full Days in Berlin

Dear Abbey Road Parents,

It is now 6\30 and we have spent nearly three full days in Berlin, not counting the first day of arrival here. The students have gone deep in the trenches so to speak on the Third Reich and the Holocaust, while taking in other sites of the city and tasting Berlin´s eclectic cuisines, from traditional German currywurst and pomme frittes to delicious Japanese bento boxes. Day 1 we visited the German History Museum, whirling us through nearly 2000 years of German history, all on two vast floors of the museum, one of which was dedicated solely to WWII to present. Students loved finding Napoleon´s famous hat to looking at WWI propaganda from the German perspective.

Next we took a two hour bike ride around the city, zooming past portions of the famous East Side Gallery of the Berlin Wall as well as looking at more working class neighborhoods, such as Kreuzberg, where a huge immigrant population inhabits. Next, we toko a guided tour of the Topography of Terror information center, a place right above the old headquarters of the SS, Gestapo, and the SA. Our fabulous guide told us everything from how Hitler gained power after his election, the development of the SS, and the idea and systematic development of the first concentration camps. On our second day, we continued our journey through this very dark and tragic moment in German history, visiting the New Synagogue, where the Kristallnacht pogrom of 1938 took place, following this up with visits to the German Jewish History Museum, and then we quickly walked by Check Point Charlie, which was right next to the museum. In the evening, we all met as a group and started our journals of the past two days and students got to share out their experiences in small groups.

Today, we had a free morning and students either went to the Holocaust Memorial in the city, right next to Potsdamer Platz or took a jaunt through Tiergarten to the Saturday Antique Market. Some groups went to the Ritter Chocolate Store and made their own chocolate bars and had a delicious chocolately snack. After lunch, we took a 45 drive out of the city to Sachsenhausen, where we had a 2 hour walk around the first major concentration camp developed by the Nazi regime, Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp. While a hot day, students were able to get a glimpse of what happened at this camp and the daily life of prisoners of war held here. After dinner we were pleasantly surprised that the director of Abbey Road payed us a visit, Dr. Arthur Kian, and we are happy to have him with us tomorrow, when we venture out of WWII to the Cold War. Tomorrow we will spend our time in former East Berlin and learn all about life behind the wall. Stay tuned for more updates soon. Really enjoying spending time with your students!

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Stay tuned for all the exciting news and photos from Berlin, Prague and Vienna this summer! More to come!