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NJCU student Collin Officer had always learned about the dark history of World War II concentration camps while tucked inside the familiar setting of a classroom.  

“But it was a profoundly different experience to actually walk on the grounds of a concentration camp and to see where everything happened,” said the senior. “It was all about the atrocity of what took place there.”

“It was very eerie and very emotional for all of us,” said student Melissa Leon. “I also felt like we were a part of history by being there.”

Officer and Leon were among 14 students who visited the Sachsenhausen Nazi work camp in Oranienburg, Germany, during a faculty-led study abroad trip in March to Berlin. The students made their remarks during a recent presentation they made to faculty, students, and staff about their impressions of their trip, which was labeled, “Berlin: A View Across Borders on Language Development, Policy, and Education.”

Students shared what they learned about the misery endured by work camp prisoners, who were corralled into over-crowded living spaces, where they daily faced starvation, disease, and death. One student said the conditions reminded her of what she saw when she visited former slave dungeons in Ghana.

The eight-day trip was organized by Dr. Peri Yuksel, Professor of Psychology, who is a native of Berlin.

“The future for our students is they are going to be functioning in a globalized environment and they have to be ready for that,” said Yuksel, in explaining the importance of study abroad journeys.

In addition to visiting the work camp, the students met and interacted with German policy makers, educators, school psychologists, and scholars. They took part in academic workshops and learned about humanitarian aid in times of crisis.

They compared the German and U.S. education systems through a visit to a German high school, and attended a session of the House of Representatives of Berlin. They also learned about the German immigration system.

Germany is one of the few European countries to take in a huge number of Syrian refugees – more than 1.2 million – in recent years. Officer was particularly impressed with this show of compassion from the country.

“All of the German citizens we talked to spoke about helping the refugees integrate into this new culture, and they are doing it with pride,” Officer said.

“The German people don’t shy away from their past,” added Officer in a reference to the brutal Nazi regime that came into power in Germany during the 1930s and led to the deaths of more than 6 million people. “We learned that the German education system was designed so that all young people are made extremely aware of what occurred in their country during that time and to take full responsibility for it.”

“And taking full responsibility,” Officer added, “is the only way to stop horrible things like this from happening again.”