It is hard to escape the classroom as a history major living in Europe. Everyday I pass a monument, a cathedral from the 14th century. I live in a perpetual state of curiosity followed by awe.
Yet there also comes a somberness from understanding the story of Europe. This is the land of two world wars. Its the birthplace of nationalism, imperialism and revolution. A hundred drops of blood and tears wrought from turmoil are mixed in with the dirt, washed away after decades of rain.
I am taking a course on France during the occupation which has opened my eyes to the dark history of France. France is country that has seen three wars with Germany and has a tumultuous history among its own people and government.
On Friday I went to a place called Les Milles which was an internment camp during World War II. Built as a brick factory in the 1870's, it was converted into a camp in 1938 by the French government. During the phony war period the government rounded up refugees who had fled the chaos of Germany, Austria and Hungary as well as Communists, artists and intellectuals and stuffed them into the old factory about the size of Smith Hall.
They did little to convert it, providing straw for mattresses and holes in the ground for toilets. There was only one faucet for the 11,000 people who at one time were kept prisoner there. It became a place of death as diseases like Typhoid and Tuberculosis spread and people committed suicide.
When the war heated up in 1940, the Marshal of the Vichy government Phillipe Petain, who is now seen as a collaborator, decided to turn the internment camp into a holding camp. Jewish families were rounded up and kept there among the still interned refugees.
The families spent weeks and months trying to make connections, to get paperwork sent in from the outside to buy their ticket to freedom. If they found no way to negotiate their situation they were eventually packed 100 at a time like cattle into wooden railcars with no windows. They left Les Milles behind them knowing its conditions of brick dust choking their lungs and widespread dysentary were better than those of their destination; Auschwitz.
It is emotional for me to just read this history. Yet to walk among it, especially with my vivid imagination, brings a whole new level of emotion. For me it is the shared sensation of the space that touches my humanity. For example, despite it being 60 degrees outside, when I entered the basement of Les Milles a thoroughly numbing, evil cold enveloped me. The space was pitch black and had a must composed of decay, dust and something else I cannot quite put my finger on.
Being down there for just ten minutes made me anxious and uncomfortable. But then under a spotlight we saw wall carvings in German, names and dates, 1940, 1943. People slept down here, in this. They cozied up to these brick walls as they went to sleep, trying to take their mind off their hunger or disease or the fact that they would not be able to get a new passport in time. Their straw mats might be gone now but in that cold I could faintly feel the heat of those humans, hear them breathing and coughing... and sighing.
Though the content of this column may not be something a reader wants to complement their morning Starbucks, it is important to spread the knowledge of this history. In France many people were not aware that this was happening until the end of the war, and by then people had been in the internment camp for seven years or sent to their fate in extermination camps. The question "what if they had known" is a painful one to pose.
That is why we need to know this history. We need to recognize the dangerous process of stereotyping, categorizing and dehumanizing when it presents itself in even the most subtle of ways. History makes me understand the fragility of our own humanity. It is an emotional and painful process to leave my bubble of apathy to be accosted with the truth of the past. Yet from that grave disillusionment comes a responsibility that each generation must discover. This responsibility is driven by the hope that we can make the history of this era a little less hard to swallow for our own children.
Yet there also comes a somberness from understanding the story of Europe. This is the land of two world wars. Its the birthplace of nationalism, imperialism and revolution. A hundred drops of blood and tears wrought from turmoil are mixed in with the dirt, washed away after decades of rain.
I am taking a course on France during the occupation which has opened my eyes to the dark history of France. France is country that has seen three wars with Germany and has a tumultuous history among its own people and government.
On Friday I went to a place called Les Milles which was an internment camp during World War II. Built as a brick factory in the 1870's, it was converted into a camp in 1938 by the French government. During the phony war period the government rounded up refugees who had fled the chaos of Germany, Austria and Hungary as well as Communists, artists and intellectuals and stuffed them into the old factory about the size of Smith Hall.
They did little to convert it, providing straw for mattresses and holes in the ground for toilets. There was only one faucet for the 11,000 people who at one time were kept prisoner there. It became a place of death as diseases like Typhoid and Tuberculosis spread and people committed suicide.
When the war heated up in 1940, the Marshal of the Vichy government Phillipe Petain, who is now seen as a collaborator, decided to turn the internment camp into a holding camp. Jewish families were rounded up and kept there among the still interned refugees.
The families spent weeks and months trying to make connections, to get paperwork sent in from the outside to buy their ticket to freedom. If they found no way to negotiate their situation they were eventually packed 100 at a time like cattle into wooden railcars with no windows. They left Les Milles behind them knowing its conditions of brick dust choking their lungs and widespread dysentary were better than those of their destination; Auschwitz.
It is emotional for me to just read this history. Yet to walk among it, especially with my vivid imagination, brings a whole new level of emotion. For me it is the shared sensation of the space that touches my humanity. For example, despite it being 60 degrees outside, when I entered the basement of Les Milles a thoroughly numbing, evil cold enveloped me. The space was pitch black and had a must composed of decay, dust and something else I cannot quite put my finger on.
Being down there for just ten minutes made me anxious and uncomfortable. But then under a spotlight we saw wall carvings in German, names and dates, 1940, 1943. People slept down here, in this. They cozied up to these brick walls as they went to sleep, trying to take their mind off their hunger or disease or the fact that they would not be able to get a new passport in time. Their straw mats might be gone now but in that cold I could faintly feel the heat of those humans, hear them breathing and coughing... and sighing.
Though the content of this column may not be something a reader wants to complement their morning Starbucks, it is important to spread the knowledge of this history. In France many people were not aware that this was happening until the end of the war, and by then people had been in the internment camp for seven years or sent to their fate in extermination camps. The question "what if they had known" is a painful one to pose.
That is why we need to know this history. We need to recognize the dangerous process of stereotyping, categorizing and dehumanizing when it presents itself in even the most subtle of ways. History makes me understand the fragility of our own humanity. It is an emotional and painful process to leave my bubble of apathy to be accosted with the truth of the past. Yet from that grave disillusionment comes a responsibility that each generation must discover. This responsibility is driven by the hope that we can make the history of this era a little less hard to swallow for our own children.