Daniel Gavin ’00

Personal Background

My passion for the German language began in high school when I received a travel scholarship that allowed me to spend a summer in Bavaria, Germany. I continued this journey at Bates College, including a full year abroad at the University of Vienna. During my tenure at Bates College, I worked as both a teaching assistant for the brilliant Professor Craig Decker in the German department and also served as a guest lecturer on World War II history and the Holocaust at high schools in the Lewiston-Auburn area on behalf of the History department. At this point, a deep love for education was growing, and I was certain that I would make this my permanent career.

After many years of teaching both history and German at Boston Latin School in Boston, Massachusetts, my family and I moved to Burlington, VT, during the summer of 2021, and I am currently teaching German full-time at Burlington High School. Due to the discovery of carcinogenic PCB chemicals in our previous high school, we are temporarily relocated to an abandoned Macy’s department store building. With makeshift walls and no sound mitigation, the school is beyond cacophonous and chaotic. Our administration is trying to boost spirits during this tumultuous time as we wait for the construction of a new school (approx. two more years). However, it is still a herculean task daily to create school spirit, especially in the Under Armour section where I am teaching. Our tiny cafeteria and shared space for the students is in the Michael Kors’ section of the old Macy’s, and students find this very cramped and loud. In short, Burlington High School has been challenging for me, my colleagues, and all of the students, and I am seeking ways to invigorate my classroom with a new sense of purpose and creative energy. This is what inspired me to apply for the Barlow Alumni Travel Grant. In addition, the town of Burlington is an immigrant/refugee relocation community, and therefore, the percentage of students from the global majority is hovering around 50%. With this in mind, I wanted to boost my German curriculum’s coverage of “Afro-German” history and culture.

Trip Report

I spent twelve days in Germany, mainly in Munich and Berlin. During my first day in Munich, I focused on getting a feel of the city and, in particular, wanted to learn about World War II’s past since this city (along with Nürnberg) was the center of the Nazi rise to power. Almost 42% of this city was destroyed during World War II, so much of what you are viewing has been rebuilt in the past 70 years.

During my first day’s walk around the city, I saw Odeon Platz, where Hitler’s “Putsch,” or uprising in 1923, was ultimately defeated. I went to Munich University, where the “White Rose” resistance movement to the Nazis was centered, and saw the memorial to Hans and Sophie School, who were executed as leaders of this “White Rose” movement. I walked through the center of town where the beautiful Glockenspiel was ringing and saw the building where Josef Goebbels read out the Nuremberg Racial laws to the public in 1935.

This first day oriented me to the tragic German past that led to the murder of 10 million people. As many of us know, 6 million of these individuals were Jews, but there were also millions of other victims, including the Roma/Sinti, Jehovah’s Witnesses, homosexuals, communists, and the disabled. Many do not remember that Afro-Germans were targeted during the Nazi persecution of non-Aryan peoples, and many died in the Holocaust. The Nuremberg Racial purity laws were applied to black Germans as well. During the Nazi regime, thousands were forced out of their jobs, sterilized, and sent to concentration camps. I went to Dachau, the first concentration camp constructed by the Nazis, which is just around 30 km outside of Munich. This was a sobering and emotional experience. It wasn’t my first time visiting a concentration camp. I had been to Auschwitz, Majdanek, Mauthausen, and Theresienstadt, but this camp was the oldest, and its exhibitions were quite powerful.

My tour guide was phenomenal. He explained that there wasn’t an Afro-German exhibit at Dachau yet and that he was personally charged with this project. He explained that Dachau had the most Afro-German prisoners but that the evidence was sparse. That being said, he was writing a book at the moment about the Afro-German experience under the Nazi regime and said that this research would ultimately manifest itself into a new exhibit at Dachau. I took down his contact information and have been emailing with him ever since. He has been providing me with some incredible new materials that I can incorporate into my curriculum.

On my way to Berlin, I stopped in Dresden for two days. I was completely blown away by how transformed this city was! I was there in the 90s, and back then, there were still many buildings that had not been rebuilt since the end of World War II. Over 90% of this city’s center was destroyed during the war, but you wouldn’t know that now, traversing its beautiful cobblestoned streets and walking past gorgeously renovated churches and palaces.

After a brief stop in Dresden, I moved on to my main focus for this trip, which was Berlin. I started with a walking tour through the Tiergarten, a park very close to the Brandenburger Tor. There, I wanted to visit all of the memorials to the murdered victims of the Holocaust. Although you see powerful memorials to the Jews, Romi/Sinti, homosexuals, political prisoners, and the disabled, there is no memorial to the Afro-Germans. My tour guide informed me that all of these memorials had committees made up mainly of survivors and relatives of survivors that lobbied for their construction for years. The representation of Afro-German survivors is quite small. Therefore, the lack of this voice is the reason we don’t have any “Denkmal” to the Afro-German experience during the Nazi era. That being said, he informed me that there was a growing movement of black Germans and others campaigning for its creation.

I had read a great deal about “Stolpersteine” before I arrived in Berlin and was eager to hunt for some of these “stumbling stones.” The German artist Gunter Demnig created this movement where brass stones would be embedded into the sidewalk before a residence where a victim of the Holocaust lived, worked, or studied to give them a place in history again. He started this project in Berlin, but it has branched out all over Germany and Europe. (NOTE: Curiously enough, there aren’t any “Stolpersteine” in Munich because the mayor thought they were too controversial. They didn’t like the idea that individuals were stepping on the names of victims of the Holocaust.) The “Stolpersteine” movement is growing, and more and more victims are being recognized all over Europe. During the past few years, there has been money raised by the relatives of Afro-Germans to honor those who died in the Holocaust. There are several now in Berlin.

I learned from my tour guide that if I wanted to create a project and have my students research any one Afro-German victim of the Holocaust, we could then create a fundraising campaign and ultimately sponsor the creation of a “Stolpersteine” memorial to honor a specific victim. He provided me with contact information on how to make this happen, and my goal is to conduct a project like this in my classes back in Burlington.

In addition to the Afro-German experience during the Holocaust, I also wanted to learn more about Germany’s colonial past. In particular, I read about a new set of memorials to the victims of the Nama-Herero Genocide that occurred in the former Southwest Africa (Namibia today) during the years of 1904-1908. After an uprising by the Nama and Herero people against German occupation, the German army slaughtered around 80% of the Herero population and 50% of the Nama. This genocide also saw the first use of the Concentration Camp as an instrument of mass torture and death. I went to the African Quarter in Berlin and studied the memorials of these atrocities. I learned that the street names here were initially named after former German Colonial generals who carried out this genocide but that over the course of the past decade, protests and campaigns had successfully led to the changing of these names to honor Nama and Herero victims. My tour guide was actually a Namibian immigrant and talked of distant relatives of his who were killed in the genocide. I again obtained his contact information since he promised to provide me with books that I could read and even some great materials for kids to read.

I, of course, did a lot of other sightseeing in Berlin: The Berlin Wall, Fernsehturm (TV Tower), Brandenburger Tor, Bebelplatz, where the Nazi book burning occurred, The Reichstag, etc. This incredible experience helped me immeasurably as I map out future trips with my students!

Reflections and Next Steps

One of my main takeaways from this experience was that the acknowledgment of the Afro-German experience during the Holocaust is still very slow-moving in Germany. I was happy to hear about the campaigns to change this, and that progress will be made regarding exhibits and memorials covering this topic, but it is also quite tragic that this has not happened yet. I do hope to see this transformation over time as I take kids on trips to Germany. That being said, this trip provided me with an incredible trove of connections and resources. As I mentioned in my trip report above, I obtained the contact information from all of my tour guides and am already emailing them to obtain resources that I could incorporate into my curriculum. The pictures I took and the history I have learned will already serve as an amazing addition to my classroom materials. In addition, I am also mapping out a trip for my students that will incorporate the cities of Munich, Dresden, and Berlin. This trip was critical to my itinerary planning, and I feel incredibly lucky to have had this opportunity. I am very grateful to David Barlow and the entire Bates Community for providing me with this experience.