At a school at which commitment to experiential learning is written right into the Mission Statement, it's no surprise that field trips are common. Some, organized well in advance, excuse students for several academic blocks, or even a whole school day; (students are responsibile for completing all assignments.) Yesterday's Holocaust class trip, however, was extraordinary. Supported by funds from a private foundation, fourteen students and four adults flew into BWI and took a bus to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, adjacent to the Mall in Washington, DC.

This is Baltimore Harbor from 3,000 feet:

Opened in 1985, the museum is the architectural masterpiece of James Ingo Freed, whose abstract symbolism initially disorients visitors, and then brings them into a world of steel girders, rivets, concrete and brick.

As one enters, you are given an ID card which provides you the identity of a real victim of the horrors of Nazi persecution. As you enter the permanent exhibit and learn of the rise of the Nazis, you turn a page in your ID booklet to learn something of your new character. At each level, as you proceed through the exhibit's gut-wrenching procession of photography, film and displays, you turn another page in your booklet. Will you survive in the end? My character, a Dutch boy named Gideon Boissevain, did not. He was executed on October 1, 1942--along with his brother--at the age of 20. At the end, you enter the immense, sparse Hall of Remembrance, where an eternal flame burns over an altar. For the visitor who has just experienced the claustrophobia and disorientation of the holocaust exhibits, the effect is emotionally devastating.

The quotation above the alter is from Deuteronomy: "Only guard yourself and guard your soul carefully, lest you forget the things your eyes saw, and lest these things depart your heart all the days of your life. And you shall make them known to your children, and to your children's children." Below, students make journal entries in the Hall of Remembrance:

While the museum takes visitors on a tour of uncomfortable emotions, it avoids the easy strategy of peaking rage against Nazis. It's mission, rather, is to let us bear witness to something that happened. We explore not just why the Nazis acted, but how others--whether from Germany, or the United States--stood by in silence, over centuries of institutionalized persecution.

After almost four hours at the museum, we had time for a brisk walk to the Washington Monument, from which we could see the Executive Mansion, the Capitol and the Lincoln Memorial.

Germany had been a democracy prior to Hitler's declaration that the Fuhrer was the Nazi Party. How fragile democracies can be!

The next page will appear on this site Monday evening. ________________________________________