[Special Issue] Reflections
Ellie Hiotakis Schmidtke
Now months after completing the UVic study tour, I feel set in the fact that the experience was by far the most educational, emotional, and inspiring adventure of my life. Memory politics was central to the learning outcomes and course content, I sincerely enjoyed this experience as I and 20 other classmates were able to be directly immersed to the ongoing dialogue surrounding European memory politics. Having the experience of being able to physically attend and view various European sites of memory allowed me to reflect and react to the content in a different and much more direct way as opposed to interacting with information that could be read in a textbook or academic work.
It is difficult to convey everything I have learnt in a few pages. This trip has been nothing short of life-changing, and it has completely altered my perspective on the world and life. This tour has allowed me to study the human experience. I have been to concentration camps and dark basements in which people were tortured, have had the privilege of listening to a holocaust survivor speak about the horrors she suffered at Auschwitz, and I have spent many days wondering how society could let such horror and disgusting acts occur. I wonder how people find hope and a will to live after surviving such horrors. I predict that the answer is simple: human connection. The connection my classmates and I shared on this tour is what got me through such an emotional rollercoaster. I was able to experience, eat, cry, and laugh with the kindest, and inspirational group of students in the world. I was able to witness the absolute atrocities and worst acts committed by men in the world, but I was constantly comforted and surrounded by individuals who were feeling the same way. After learning and seeing the saddest things in the world, it was very easy initially to fall into pessimism and have no hope for the future. But spending time with my peers gave me endless amounts of hope. While there are still antisemitic hate groups and Neo-Nazis in government, they will not win when there are such kind and educated people who have devoted their lives to holocaust work-- I have had the absolute privilege of meeting historians, professors, and various academics who are dedicated to this field. I do not leave the tour feeling a sense of sorrow or hopelessness; I instead board my plane home full of hope. The future may seem dull, but surrounded by my classmates, I know we will be okay.
On the bus from Klagenfurt, Austria, to Trieste, Italy, I noticed a spray-painted black swastika on a building. My heart dropped as the swastika got smaller and smaller as the bus drove away, after everything we had seen so far it was a very jarring experience. In comparison to the meeting, we had with the education board in Vienna, Austria, where academics spoke about how they were attempting to combat anti-Semitic acts, seeing an actual hate symbol out in “the wild” or not as a part of a museum exhibit was shocking and unnerving. I can read hours of academic journals or statistics telling me that hate crimes are still happening against Jewish people, but nothing can ever truly prepare you for seeing it. The swastika out in public, armed guards surrounding Jewish museums, and acts of vandalism left by visitors in the barracks of Auschwitz; these are all painful reminders that this is not over. Antisemitism and Jewish hate continue to prevail in history. While WWII is over, and the concentration camps have been long liberated, hate is alive and well. It is of vital importance that we all do our part to stand up against hate. We cannot change the past, so now, in the present, we must devote and direct our energy to target Neo-Nazi groups, organizations, and antisemitic acts of hatred.
Ellie Hiotakis Schmidtke
Picture: Antinazi-antifa-graffiti by Cogiati (Wikimedia Commons). Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 (Creative Commons Attribution–ShareAlike 3.0 Unported). No changes have been made.
