This is a reflection written by Francesca Cassandro, a student at Class V Pontano Scientific Institute, after participating in the interdisciplinary project « Learning from the Past for the Future ».

When at the beginning of the school year we were offered Germany as a destination for the fifth-year study trip, we were a bit taken aback. Our enthusiasm to face a trip abroad, all together, for the last time, was oriented towards other countries. Maybe Spain or England. Germany, in our imagination, was a somewhat « sad » and « heavy » destination but, over time, intertwining the study of history, literature, philosophy, art, civic education … in short, a bit of everything human knowledge, we understood the reason for that trip. Our professors wanted to make us part of a real historical and cultural renaissance. The redemption from a negative and cumbersome past which, over the decades, has created stereotypes linked to Teutonic culture, not exactly easy to overcome. Germany, and especially Berlin, is one of those places that is not afraid to show its past. Even if it is negative. Without a shadow of a doubt, this was the first lesson learned from the visit to the German capital. Here we were able to see in every part of the city, the awareness of a people for all the horror that characterized those places. In our eyes and in the eyes of the tourist, one of the cruellest pages in the history of humanity is put on display. The second lesson learned – at least as far as I’m concerned – was that of receiving an invitation to get up in the face of the difficulties that I will (almost certainly) encounter on my way. Just like Germany did.

Another teaching received is certainly that of how much man is able to divert science towards good or, ruthlessly, towards evil. The visit to the Deutsches Museum has given us many surprises in the field of knowledge and technology and in particular, an old wooden table has attracted our attention. I immediately understood that it was the table where the study of « nuclear fission » took place. Before the trip we had been educated both historically and scientifically about the places we would visit. On this old desk, there were electrical materials such as bakelite sockets and switches, old capacitors, amplifiers, batteries, valves and a network of wires that connect them. On the lower floor – I like to think arranged according to a scheme of the time – there were a series of batteries. We are talking about the original equipment used by Otto Hahn, Nobel prize for chemistry who, together with Lise Meitner and Fritz Strassmann, discovered the nuclear fission of uranium in 1938.

Both the table and the other tools are authentic, including the paraffin cylinder. Documenting myself, I learned of the fact that the complete work took place in three separate places. In one room, the irradiation of the uranium sample took place with the neutron source; the chemistry laboratory was set up in a second room and the radioactivity of the products was measured in a third.

The discovery of the nuclear fission of the uranium atom was attributed to Otto Hann, who was awarded the Nobel prize in 1944. A commemorative plaque on the wall next to the table reminds us that the discovery is shared with Lise Meitner and Fritz Straßmann, the former a physicist and the latter a chemist.

It is no coincidence that the Holocaust and the atomic bomb emerged simultaneously from the tumultuous and dramatic events of the 20th century. A frightening combination that has its roots in Hitler’s anti-Semitic policy and in the consequent diaspora of excellent physicists, deeply aware of both the potential of nuclear weapons and the ambitions of the Nazi regime, as Gordon Fraser recounts, a theoretical physicist who for many years also worked at a very high level as a scientific journalist. The book The Quantum Exodus. Jewish Fugitives, the Atomic Bomb, and the Holocaust unfolds at the intersection of three major themes: World War II, cutting-edge physics, and the holocaust.

This discovery, together with Enrico Fermi’s atomic pile, marked the beginning of the history of nuclear energy and the first atomic bomb. Fermi immediately intuited that, if the uranium nucleus is broken, its fragments contain too many neutrons compared to protons to be stable and can emit free, secondary neutrons, which in turn can cause other fissions, up to the cascade process which triggers the chain reaction and the release of nuclear energy. The scientific community and the world as a whole have always moved from the enthusiasm of these discoveries to the road to new sources of « clean » energy. All of this, however, while maintaining awareness of this discovery, carries with it a great responsibility on an ethical level.

In addition to the Berlin museums, we visited the Brandenburg Gate, the sad and famous Berlin Wall (anti-fascist barrier) active from 1961 to 1989, focusing on the historical, cultural, economic and social aspect that the separation brought about in the years in which it was prevented movement of persons to West Germany. We spent the last days of the trip in Munich, with a stopover in Dachau. It goes without saying that here, the sense of helplessness and the pain I felt visiting this place was devastating. I felt emptied, annihilated by the mere thought of what the deportees experienced here.

« There is a road that leads to freedom. Its cornerstones are: obedience, honesty, cleanliness, sobriety, hard work, discipline, sacrifice, sincerity and love for the country ».

This is the inscription on the roof of the Dachau Concentration Camp, the first Nazi concentration camp, built by Heinrich Himmler in March 1933 for the detention of political prisoners. In all it had more than 200,000 prisoners, the victims were between 30,000 and 43,000.

Arbeit Macht Frei  » (Work makes you free). This inscription immediately struck us as well as its history and what this place represents.

Here « scientific experiments » were conducted by Nazi doctors. There is a stump where prisoners were whipped and a diagram showing the different categories of deportees (Jews, homosexuals, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Poles, Roma and other types of « asocial ») and documenting the persecutions against « degenerate » intellectuals, bandits from the party.

Outside, in what used to be the roll call square (where prisoners were counted in the morning and in the evening and their work was assigned to them) there has been an International Memorial since 1968, where an inscription in English, French, Yiddish, German and Russian which reads: ‘Never again’. Behind the museum building is the bunker, the infamous prison of the camp where inmates were tortured. The executions took place in the courtyard of the bunker.

The detainees were held in large barracks, now demolished, which lined the main street north of the roll call square.

None of us deliberately took pictures of the place. Personally, I prayed the entire way. I prayed for those children separated from their mother, father, siblings only because, perhaps, they got off the wrong side of the carriage that took them to places of death.

The thing that struck me is that this place of torture is seen as a museum. And it has the value – in fact – of a tourist site. Inside the barracks, quite a few rubber butts make a fine show of themselves stuck to the walls of those gloomy dormitories. Who stuck them? It is absurd to believe but some Germans stuck them during guided tours. Whether it’s out of contempt, naivety or lack of civic sense, it doesn’t matter. We saw this scene and it baffled us a lot.

Not infrequently, the guides invited us to take pictures in the gas « showers ». Just like you do in front of a panorama. We refused. We have no images of this place. My eyes are still full of that silent pain. In Dachau I had the confirmation that what I want is to put myself at the service of others…through science…for good. Becoming a researcher, a geneticist to help those who suffer. A positive, benevolent, altruistic science. The more I listened to the guide talk about the inhuman scientific experiments that doctors performed on children, Jews, twins or minorities, the more the need to do good increased in me. Yes, here I grew up a lot and quickly. With regard to Science for… more in-depth projects were carried out with Prof. Vanessa Rowley, Prof. Giovanna Callegari and Professor Giovanni Nugnes. Teachers, who have provided us with all the tools necessary to face the educational journey and who have shared with us eight days that are really important for us students. Not only have we been a cohesive and united group but, in many circumstances we have also found spiritual guides in these teachers. There was a lot of respect for our sensitivity in visiting one place rather than another.

The experience of this journey leads me to recommend it to all my peers because, only by knowing the past can we commit ourselves to changing the future, and if we young people don’t believe in the future… who should do it?

We listen to others, we help them. We choose the path that will give us the opportunity to change things. We can do it, we are Pontaniani!