Pre-Trip Thoughts.

Well, I'm back on the blogging scene, but this time there are no bikes involved :) For those who are unfamiliar with the shenanigans I'm up to this summer, I'll provide you with a bit of background information.

This summer I will be spending 10 days with 31 student leaders from across Canada as we participate together in a Holocaust memorial tour. Entitled "The March of Remembrance and Hope", this journey will bring us through Germany and Poland as we visit numerous memorials, museums, and sites where the infamous concentration camps existed. What makes this journey quite unique, apart from experiencing it with 31 strangers, is that we are incredibly fortunate to be accompanied by Polish tour guides, Holocaust experts, and most extraordinary, a Holocaust survivor.

Visiting infamous sites such as Bebelplatz - the site of a massive book burning, The Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, former Jewish Ghettos, as well as the concentration/death camps of Auschwitz, Majdanek, and Treblinka, the group will engage in learning the history of the Holocaust as well as factors that led to it's eventual realization over 60 years ago. In visiting the sites, we will be faced with visual reminders of the progression of hatred and intolerance. However, this trip is far from simply academic. Rather, apart from solely providing a historical education, the primary goal of the experience is a training exercise for student leaders. In the places we see and first-hand accounts we listen to, we are pushed to examine how injustice develops in society, where it was present in history, and where such injustice and hatred remain to this day. In understanding the presence and development of this intolerance, power differentials, and resulting oppression of these inequalities, we are challenged to apply our knowledge of the past as a tool to impact the future and combat the inequalities and oppressive practices which are built-in to our societies and cultures, so that the future may not be stained with the unsightly scars of our pasts.

A challenge I recognize as I enter into this experience is one of the Log and the Speck. To state simply, it is simple to enter this tour with a mind focussed on acknowledging the horrors of the past, with fingers pointed at others for the unthinkable crimes committed against humanity; It is simple to shame those of the past and label them as monsters, all the while placing ourselves on a pedestal of righteousness as we believe we would never stoop to such evils. However, it is much more difficult to come down from our high perch and reflect on the ways in which society continues to perpetuate inequality, feeds oppression of the "other", and most disturbingly, our own participation in these vicious cycles. For myself, this is not only one of the primary objectives of the trip, but perhaps the most important one. If we can begin to use the past as tool to shape the future, we can truly begin to create a society in which equality and acceptance are not just words which we say, but ideals that we embody in our everyday actions. Only when we can use the lens of the past to change our perspective of the present, will we be able to create a future in which equality is something experienced by all, regardless of age, class, gender, sexual orientation, religion, or race.

As I embark on this journey, I plan to keep note of my thoughts, points of discussion with my peers, and stories of remembrance from the survivors, as well as pictures. I anticipate that the stories and information I relay in this blog will serve as a method by which the message of this trip can be passed on to many, beyond the confines of our group.

For more information on the March of Remembrance and Hope, visit the link below:
http://www.remembranceandhope.com/

Stay Tuned!