This weekend, our Year 11 historians had the incredible experience of travelling to Berlin and exploring the historical sites within the city and beyond. They arrived on Friday morning, and took in the cultural sites of Brandenburg Gate, the Holocaust Memorial Site and the Reichstag Building – the political capital of Germany.

On Saturday, pupils bore witness to the lives lost in Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp during the Nazis reign, before visiting the Cold War-era Berlin Wall and Palace of Tears – the focal point of tension between the Soviet Communist East and NATO Capitalist West. At the camp, our students left messages along the testimonial wall – with Angel W thoughtfully writing “Learn from History – we are all human.” We ended the day with a trip to Alexanderplatz, where students ate and shopped beneath the TV Tower.

On our final day, pupils successfully navigated the metro system and travelled to Checkpoint Charlie and the Topography of Terror Museum. Here, students had a group photo in front of the bullet-ridden Gestapo HQ – the scene of the final showdown between the defeated Nazis and surrounding US-British forces, before walking back to the hotel via the park above the Fuhrerbunker… the area which witnessed the end of the Nazi leadership and liberation of Germany.