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-What are your expectations of the visit to Buchenwald, i.e. what do you,
personally, hope to learn from, or perhaps come to terms with during the
visit? How do you think you will react (emotionally or otherwise) while
you are at the camp?
I feel very isolated from the emotional aspect because of my thesis ("Collective Memory and the Struggle for
National Identity: The Politics of Memory of the Third Reich in Germany,
1945-1998"). Having written my rough draft this way, I hope to regain the emotion through the landscape and infuse this in the continued process of writing my thesis.
I am afraid to walk through the museum again. There are certain things that have haunted me since my visit--a small stone heart, children's scribbles in the visitors book: "It was right, what they did," imagining being caged in with the beauty surrounding the mountain....
Before I visited, I expected that I would see barracks, straw, ovens--not museums or tourist shops. My mother visited one in Poland--no one else was there. I didn't expect the busloads of German schoolchildren--nor did I expect their unfazed and jovial demeanor. I wanted to visit the camp, but was nervous to do so in a group. I felt it was a very personal experience. I was impressed with Buchenwald as a place of memory--it has a sense of authenticity. >>
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