By Ruben McCarthy
The day started off with going to the Olympiastadion Berlin, where the 1936 Olympic games took place and used as propaganda for the Nazi regime. The exterior architecture was completely intact and looked exactly like it was over 80 years ago. The site felt very eery, pulled back to a time that felt incomprehensible.
From there we took a train directly to Oranienburg, a town in Brandenburg that is an hour outside of Berlin and where the Sachsenhausen concentration camp is located. We had a quick lunch and then walked 20 minutes to the site, where we met our tour guide.
For over two hours, we were led around the grounds – stopping at different places and hearing the history of what took place.
It felt heavy and hard to process what happened. The human capacity for cruelty is terrifying, how ideology can be so easily deep rooted into people’s minds, when power has the opportunity to control the flow and source of information. It made me even more aware that journalism and free speech are core components to combat this history from repeating itself.
That night we had our goodbye dinner at a Vietnamese restaurant, where I tried Pho for the first time – a soup dish with broth, rice noodles, herbs, and a choice of beef. We also did a quiz to test our knowledge of what we learnt throughout the trip. It was for sure a nice way to wrap up such a busy, jam packed week in Berlin.
