Cincinnati - The grand station of the Underground Railroad

Hello everybody,

Earlier today we visited the Freedom Center in Downtown Cincinnati where wie learned a lot about the history of slavery, the underground railroad, and the experiences of African Americans in the United States.

For me, the most disturbing part of the museum was the Anderson slave pen. In the first floor of the museum there is a house rebuild where the slave-trader John W. Anderson locked his slaves. He had a few of those slave pens at his pinecrest farm outside Maysville, Kentucky. If you are standing in front of this house you think it's an average building and that there is nothing special about it but if you go inside and you get to know by the audio tour, that there were so many people kept in this little house you feel very sorry for the people and you ask yourself why people do something like that to other people. The atmosphere is emphasized by the sad and slow music with the minor cords. It's a really touching part of the museum.

When I was sitting in this slave pen listening to the sad music I remembered the visit to Buchenwald when I was a child. The Nazis kept and killed there many people and today there is a memorial about it like the one here in Cincinnati about slavery. I think you can't really compare these two cruel things because the Nazis killed even more people and they just wanted to kill them there like people build machines in a company. You can name it industrial killing. It was even worse than this sad chapter in the American history but my mood was about the same in these tow situations: disbelieving and incomprehension that and why people did something like that to other people!

I think if you know what happened in the history you can learn of it and there should nothing like that happen again. It's important to learn about the history especially about the sad chapters of the home country. Though you are not guilty for what your ancestors did you should know it. Especially german people should make an effort that something like the holocaust won't happen again!

Greetz,
Sebastian