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From Sam W., a senior majoring in biology: There was frost on the willows at Stutthof. Treblinka was blanketed in white. Auschwitz-Birkenau hung heavy with mist and fog. It has just begun to snow at Majdanek. These places aren’t supposed to be pretty. They are supposed to be openings to some void, pits in both the earth and the human narrative.  But, somehow, they are beautiful? Lying beneath, or perhaps above, the wretched history of these sites are places, monuments, and nature so impeccably designed and borne that I dare call them idyllic. It seems so wrong, but these spaces are serene in an unsettling, paranormal way. The wind blew through Chelmno and her forests, the bells of nearby churches [...]

From Sam W., a senior majoring in biology: When I was thinking about coming to Poland with the Embrey Human Rights Program, I talked a lot to people who had gone before. For one friend, the trip changed her life, encouraging her to change her major and enter an entirely different field. For others, it shook and broke them, leaving them in week- or month-long periods of depression. The Poland trip was, and is, that heavy. I looked forward to this. I wanted to experience this seemingly mystical transformation. Now, the actor in me should have known that expectation is the enemy of experience – and at least so far, I can’t say that I felt the earth shatter. That [...]

From Lauren J., a junior studying biology and ethics: At the memorial presentation I made at the Gross-Rosen concentration camp site, I read the poem First They Came, by Martin Niemoller, a German Lutheran pastor who once supported Hitler but then began to oppose the Nazis. Niemoller was then arrested and sent to live in concentration camps. He lived in a concentration camp until it was liberated in 1945. Different versions of his poem exist, but his message is clear. The silence of the German people, particularly the heads of the Protestant churches, during the mass imprisonment and execution of the Jewish people, was wrongful. First They Came First they came for the Jews and I did not speak out because I [...]

An update from Hunter K., a sophomore studying human rights, Spanish and pre-law: These words are from our memorial presentation at the Palmiry National Memorial Museum, located near Warsaw: The most powerful thing I’ve heard on this trip was a quote from one of the survivors in the last few minutes of the documentary we saw at Gross-Rosen. He said, “I forgive my torturers for the pain they caused me, but I can never forget. I can forgive, and I hope they rest in peace. "You have hurt, you have injured, you have wronged, and you will suffer the consequences—but, despite all that, I accept you." Tonight, we leave this place. For many of us, it may be years before [...]