neWS & VieWS fRoM BABlAke SChool iSSUe 54 SPRing 2011
In this issue
‘...Berlin is a city that would delight any historian’
open to offers... 02 it’s all greek to me... 03 Amnesty Ambassadors 04 Peer support 05 holocaust testimony 06 A flavour of Spain 07 School friends! 08 Working in the community 09 Sweet success 10 Weather for the world 11 life is a Cabaret 12 Sport 13
berlIn PaSt anD PreSent by katHryn joneS & kalIka PurI
Allow us to pitch the Berlin history trip to you – four days in the capital of a history-rich country, a country whose actions left eternal scars upon it, a country that was torn down the middle and then united once more at a very high cost. Berlin is a city that would delight any historian, but also one that even now is still recovering from its ordeal – a fantastic educational opportunity. the only downside: the temperature was never above zero degrees centigrade! Despite this we bravely charged forward, determined to get the most out of this exciting visit; we walked for many hours around Berlin, absorbing huge amounts of information. Pupils studying german tried to speak the language at every opportunity and were completely baffled when they received completely the wrong order in McDonalds! We visited the remains of the Berlin Wall and learned more about the Cold War. it was almost unbelievable that two walls and a small strip of land in between could separate two so drastically different ways of life. We had a guided tour of Wannsee Conference house. on 20th January 1942, a meeting, chaired by
heydrich, was held there to discuss the murder of european Jews. the beauty of the villa’s surroundings was unexpected; as a place with such an awful history, i had imagined it to be very dark and enclosed but instead it was open, with lots of greenery, and looked out onto the lake. it was a very chilling experience, knowing that you were standing in the room where the decision was made to take the lives of so many innocent people. We were able to see the original documents which recorded the discussion and read through the translations. We then travelled to Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp and were given a tour. our first impression of the camp was how dark and unwelcoming the whole area was, with its gate displaying the words ‘Arbeit macht frei’ meaning ‘work makes you free’. it was horrifying to know that these prisoners were given false hope from the start as the only release for most of them would be in death. the experience was a shocking one and proved to us that to truly understand the horrendous scale of the holocaust, you need to visit a concentration camp. it was a day of enormous contrast which opened our eyes to the harsh reality of these peoples’ lives.