My Daughter Is Going To Tour One of The Darkest Places in The History of The World

And I don’t know how to prepare her

Next week, my 14-year-old daughter is going to Berlin as part of her school trip.

It’s the trip of a lifetime because it’s the first school trip abroad for these 120 or so kids, for an entire week.

They had been on school trips earlier for a couple of nights, but those were in nearby places, within the country, and just a couple of hours away.

My daughter is excited about the trip, and so am I. We have been to Berlin three times already and I can visit the city many more times without getting tired or bored.

Last week, in her school, we the parents, were given a presentation about the trip and it increased our excitement level when we heard about all the places they would visit and the events they would join.

Every time we have been to Berlin, we have somehow missed taking a tour of the dome of the Reichstag.

They are not only going to take that tour, they are also going to attend a classical concert in the Berliner Philharmoniker along with a bunch of other fun stuff like the Escape the City tour, followed by a Graffiti workshop along the Berlin wall, tour the Sanssoucci palace, go bowling and even attend a show by the Blue Man Group.

I am thrilled and grateful for the opportunity she is getting because all I did in school was go on a zoo trip or to a planetarium.

But the part that has been bothering me is — they are starting the trip with a visit to the Sachsenhausen.

In case you are wondering, Sachsenhausen was a Nazi concentration camp. It was a training center for the Schutzstaffel (SS) officers of Nazi Germany and a practice center for perfecting the art of execution. Newer methods of mass murder were invented here. And, this is where the gas chamber was designed.

It held the prestigious status of a model camp. Trials were run and the methods practiced here for mass killing were carried out in Auschwitz and in other camps.

There could not be a darker and more shameful moment in the history of humanity, especially in the modern world.

Like millions of people, I fail to understand how thousands of otherwise sane people were brainwashed to listen to one lunatic. And how this one lunatic changed the course of history by wiping out millions of people from the world in the course of just a few years.

I have traveled the world extensively but have never visited a concentration camp. There is a lot to take in, and honestly, that’s an understatement.

Reading the life stories of some holocaust survivors like Victor Frankl gives me nightmares. Going to a concentration camp where heaps of bodies were dumped as a piece of garbage, would be beyond me.

I live very close to Amsterdam but haven’t been able to muster the courage to visit the Anne Frank Museum.

The thought of how a little girl lived in a secret annex for two complete years of her short life with, perhaps, a hope of survival until it got shattered when the Nazis captured her and sent her to the concentration camp to die.

Reading her book has caused me such sadness that I don’t know if I can handle visiting her house in person.

This is the reason I have never visited a concentration camp.

These days, visiting a concentration camp has become an Instagram moment. Some people take this as another opportunity to brag about. I do not want to be one of them.

I know that some people do visit the concentration camps to pay homage. Recently, I was reading on a travel forum where some Polish people were putting forward their arguments for visiting the concentration camps — that we should never forget those darkest moments in history and that we should never repeat the horrors.

Yes, we do have a moral obligation to learn about the madness that took place.

And that’s why a part of me tells me that it’s okay for my child to visit the concentration camp.

At the same time, I am questioning how logical it is to take a bunch of 14-year-old kids to a concentration camp, especially when some of the kids hadn’t even heard of the Berlin Wall.

That’s why it is important to send them prepared.

But I don’t know how to prepare her or anyone, for this atrocity. Hell, I am not prepared and will never be.

This evening, I sat down with her and talked about the Holocaust, how even little children were not spared, and how people were tricked into getting undressed to go to the shower room which was, in reality, the gas chamber. Her eyes became watery and tears rolled down her cheeks. She couldn’t take anymore.

And this bothers me. Is it going to be too dark to handle?

The school is also trying to prepare the kids by showing some videos and explaining facts about the genocide. But no amount of literature or documentary can prepare a child for that lunacy.

I, honestly don’t know if including the concentration camp in a school trip was a good idea. Maybe yes, maybe no. Only time will tell.

But for now, I am preparing my daughter to have courage while touring the camp, show respect, and be grateful that we are not living in that world.