OTHER ACTIVITIES
2016 History Tour to Europe
On 1 July 2016 , a group of 42 intrepid Maritzburg College travellers ( made up of 32 schoolboys and 10 adults ) jetted off to Europe from Durban ’ s King Shaka Airport on the school ’ s inaugural overseas history tour .
The date of departure was significant , as it marked the precise centenary of the start of the Battle of the Somme , of which the Battle of Delville Wood – the bloodiest and most famous battle fought by South African forces in World War I and described as ‘ the bloodiest battle hell of 1916 ’ – was a part . A desire to recognise and honour the 27 Old Boys who had fallen at the Somme had been the great raison d ’ être of the tour itself , and although the touring party visited a number of fascinating parts of Europe , the tour remained fundamentally a battlefields tour on steroids !
After the solemnity and gravity of Auschwitz , the tour party made its way by train to Berlin , which many Europeans ( especially of Teutonic origin ) regard as the ‘ coolest city on earth ’. Accompanied by our ebullient American- German guide , Dr Kevin Kennedy , who was the son of a US airman and spoke English with an American twang , but considered himself entirely German ( his maternal grandfather had been killed while serving in Rommel ’ s Afrika Korps in the Western Desert ), we toured this magnificent city , visiting the Reichstag , the site of the Führerbunker ( now an undistinguished parking lot ), the Topography of Terror Museum , the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe , Checkpoint Charlie and Museum , the Berlin Wall and its Memorial / Museum , the Nordbahnhof S-bahn Ghost Station Exhibition , the Brandenburg Gate and the site of the execution of Col . Claus von Stauffenberg . One of the most memorable visits of the entire tour was to the Jewish Museum , where we were taken around by a guide whose erudition and knowledge left even Dr Kennedy impressed ! I am sure that none of us will ever forget our visit to the museum ’ s exhibition called “ Fallen Leaves ” which chillingly echoed to the klank ! made by metal plates made to sound like the cries of children in their final moments .
The tourists pose together immediately before their departure for Warsaw from Durban ’ s King Shaka Airport .
The tourists arrived in Warsaw on 2 July and were transported to the Hotel MDM , overlooking Constitution Square in central Warsaw . The capital of Poland proved to be the favourite city for a number of the tourists , who spent many happy hours visiting its sights , including the Warsaw Uprising Museum , the Museum of the History of Polish Jews , the remains of the Warsaw Ghetto , the Chopin Memorial , the Belvedere Palace , the Stalininspired Palace of Culture & Science and its Old Town . On day three of the trip , the tourists made their way by train to Krakow , the capital of medieval Poland , with its turreted castles and lively town square , which later that night was the backdrop to a rather awkward encounter for some of the senior members of the touring party – but the less said about that the better . The primary reason for the detour south was to visit the Auschwitz I and II ( Birkenau ) Extermination Camps , which are situated 75 km outside Krakow at the town of Oswiecim . The tour of Auschwitz was much-anticipated by especially the more mature members of the tour party , and speaking for myself I have to say that it was one of my life ’ s most memorable and poignant moments to stand atop the very steps to Crematorium II at Auschwitz II- Birkenau from which about 500 000 Jews would have descended to the gas chamber below . Auschwitz remains a bleak , sombre place , and it somehow seemed appropriate that its lawns were not especially neat , its roads were bumpy , and its buildings themselves retained much of their menace – and yet it is a place that simply demands great reverence and respect for the thousands of innocent victims who perished there .
At the Jewish Museum in Berlin , Mr Dylan Löser walks over an installation called ‘ Shalekhet ’, or ’ Fallen Leaves .’ The 10 000 ‘ faces ’ covering the floor represent all innocent victims of war and violence .
The author stands atop the stairs to ‘ Krem . II ’ at Auschwitz-Birkenau . About 500 000 people ( mainly Jews ) went to their deaths in the gas chambers using these very stairs .
Our journey rolled inexorably westwards towards Flanders , like the Schlieffen-inspired advance of the German Army in the warm summer of 1914 . After passing through Cologne , we made our way to Belgium and the battlefields surrounding the once war-ravaged town of Ypres (‘ Ieper ’ to the locals ). We visited the Flanders Fields Museum , Passchendaele Memorial Museum and Cloth Hall ( rebuilt after being destroyed during World War I ), drove through many villages that would have been ravaged during the war , stopped off and visited cemeteries and memorials , and attended the famous Last Post Ceremony at the Menin Gate Memorial . It is a memorial to the Allied soldiers who died in Flanders and contains the name of five Old Collegians who died in the vicinity of the town . We also visited the largest Commonwealth War Graves Commission grave in the world , at Tyne Cot , as well as the large German cemetery at Langemark , at which I was able , amidst the 44 000 names , to recognise a number of members of my wife ’ s family , the Harms ’.
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