Walking Through History 🇩🇪🇵🇱🇨🇿✈️

Memory as Resistance: What a Holocaust Study Abroad Trip Taught Me About Now. From Auschwitz to East Berlin — a Black woman’s reflection on history, hate, survival, and what it means to remember.

I didn’t expect to come home with this much on my heart. What started as a study abroad trip through Poland, Germany, and the Czech Republic — learning about the Holocaust — turned into something deeper. I saw mass graves. I stood where genocide was organized and executed. But I also saw resistance, resilience, and how memory fights back. As a Black woman, I couldn’t separate what I witnessed from what I carry. This isn’t just about history. This is about now. Below is the full reflection I submitted for my travel journal. It’s long — because history is long. And because silence is dangerous. Thanks for reading. 

Thanks for remembering.

✨ Introduction: Walking Through Memory

Study Abroad, Soul Abroad

When I signed up for this Holocaust study abroad trip, I expected it to be intense. Emotional. Educational. I didn’t expect it to change the way I see the world — and myself.

Over two weeks, I traveled through Germany, Poland, and the Czech Republic, walking the same streets where history shattered lives. I stood in places where millions were murdered not for what they did — but for who they were. I cried. I questioned everything. I carried it all in my body — my tired legs, aching back, heavy heart.

This wasn’t just a trip. It was a reckoning.

I’m not a historian. I’m not Jewish. I’m a Black woman from America — a place with its own painful legacy. And what I saw, felt, and learned made me draw parallels I can’t ignore. From Nazi propaganda to Jim Crow laws… from Holocaust silence to MAGA rhetoric. History doesn’t just repeat — it shapeshifts.

This blog series isn’t about being polished or perfect. It’s raw. It’s personal. It’s what happens when you walk through memorials, ghettos, museums, and camps with your heart wide open and your guard down.

In this series, I’ll take you with me to:

• Berlin, where I touched the Wall and saw Martin Luther King Jr.’s legacy ripple across continents
• Sachsenhausen, a lesser-known camp that gutted me
• Warsaw, where resistance lit flames even in the dark
• Auschwitz-Birkenau, where silence screams
• Prague, where beauty and memory sit uneasily side by side

This isn’t just about what happened. It’s about what’s still happening — in language, in silence, in denial.

So if you’re ready, come walk with me. One step at a time. One country at a time. One memory at a time.  

🕯️ Because remembering is resistance.