We carried with us our own expectations, borne of our South African past. In South Africa, the past – violent, unjust, and difficult – is still abundantly present for all to see.

We were expecting simple lessons. After all, we had all learned about the Holocaust in school. Because it had happened so long ago, we assumed that ‘the past was in the past’ in Germany and Poland. Scores settled, justice done, problems solved, both had moved on. What could Europe teach us that we did not already know?

“Prior to the trip, I often asked myself if I would be able to identify with pain that looks very different from mine ...Whether I would be able to empathise with people who looked like my oppressor.”

“I have always battled with … why South Africa chose peace over justice and whether that is an approach that works globally. I wanted to learn about approaches that have been taken by other countries [dealing with difficult pasts].”

“Commencing on this trip … I had many expectations …thinking I knew and had fully understood [the history of] the Holocaust and World War II. I even rehearsed questions to answers I wanted to find out and hear about.”

“Although I had looked forward to the trip as an opportunity to learn about the Holocaust, I did not believe I would come away from the experience changed or more alert to social and political horror and injustice.”

“Prior to the trip, I had not viscerally understood that generational trauma, pain, misery, and ruin were not exclusive to Africa and the global South.”

“I was interested in knowing how Germany and Poland went about re-establishing their social fabric. What held individual nations together when their citizens’ lives and attitudes towards the state were fragile?”

Almost all the students on the tour had no explicit or familial connection to the Holocaust and had never visited these sites before.

Many of our expectations were informed by school-level and popular-culture information about this history.

“At first, I was not really open to learning as I did not feel anything and, quite honestly, I could not understand how people of the same race could be so inhumane towards each other. I come from a background that inhumane behaviour is posed towards a certain race which is our context is black.”

“As the journey loomed, it was the human element that my psyche could not fathom. I had read and studied, questioned and argued, listened and internalized. The methodology, the scale, even the reason-- I understood. Still, the answers I so desperately sought eluded me.”

“How do we heal if we don’t talk? How do we ensure that crimes against humanity never occur again if the perpetrators are not having these conversations with their children and grandchildren?”

Many students at first felt discomfort because they were not Jewish. Despite their varying identities, they were surprised by their sense of outrage and connection with the victims.

“My biggest concerns before going on the tour were about being black and being Muslim in Europe in the current political anti-immigrant and Islamophobic climate. Having gone on the tour I realise that these were not at all unreasonable fears. It was difficult dealing with content which spoke of the horrors of extreme racism and alienation and nationalism while also dealing with the racism pervasive in Germany and Poland.”

“I was interested in how European countries dealt with the Holocaust and all of the transitional justice implications that were associated with it. The global discourse surrounding the Holocaust as the most important crime against humanity to have ever taken place in world history, had given me the impression that the necessary work had been done to adequately deal with its implications.”