Nuremberg

I have so much to stay, I do not know where to start! We started our tour in court room 600 where the trials took place. The room was in a similar position it was for the trials; with some important changes we learned about. Then, we went up to the main exhibit. It was broken into two parts: the first room was where the first round of trials took place and a second, on the subsequent trials and beyond. The first room was packed with people, but, when you walked into the second there seems to be no interest. First reason, I think the architecture of the two exhibits does not invite you into the second room. It is easy to look over it and theres is shut glass door between the exhibits. This seems so strange because I found the second room 100X more interesting. It was the space for me to analyze what we can and should do with all this, what we have learned from it and what we should learn from it. Besides who is responsible for war crimes, that someone is responsible for war crimes. It does not seem write to ignore the room where you can learn of contemporary genocide and war crimes, because in essence this is what we do on a day to day. Ending the tour here was powerful because it made me question what we are learning from all of this.

The next day we went to the Nazi Rally grounds where we questioned what to do with all of the physical space. It was heavy undertaking; most of us do not know. It would seem wrong to destroy them because this does not seem practical and it would feel like we were trying to delete history. Letting all the buildings stand as is does not seem right because it covers to much of the city and it would be dangerous. You do not want to glorify any of the structures. Memorializing all of this space seems unfair to those of this generation; your city being weighted down the past and a generation you did not know. Still, building up from it does not seem right either, so much of it was made from pieces of prisoners in concentration camp and it seems strange to sit on the stadium built by prisoners while you are at a Metallica concert. Most of us left not knowing the right thing to do, it is not an easy undertaking.