By Antonio C. Westphalen
Berlin, April 15, 2025.
Since 2018, four young au pairs from Germany have lived with our family. They shared not just their time and care, but their culture, their language, and themselves. From the very beginning, our children asked when we would visit them, when we would see the places they called home. We finally made the journey across the Atlantic, fulfilling our children's dream of bringing all our former au pairs together in one place.
That evening, as our family planned the next day with our former au-pairs, someone suggested that we visit the Topography of Terror museum.
My heart skipped a beat.
This was far from an ordinary tourist destination; the museum was built where the Gestapo, SS and Reich Security main office once stood. I wasn’t worried about my 17-year-old child, his passion for history is evident. But I did not know how my younger daughter would handle the heavy subject matter. Memories of an overwhelming visit of mine, years ago, to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in D.C. resurfaced.
The next morning, we stood before the museum’s stark facade. Inside, white and orange panels hung from the ceiling, their images unsettling. The air felt heavy with respectful silence. As we progressed through the exhibits — tracing the Nazi regime’s rise to the early postwar years — I felt an uncomfortable feeling grow within me. Watching my son’s intense focus and my daughter’s quiet reflection, I realized this was more than just a history lesson. Standing before the first panels, a familiar scenario unfolded: The exhibit described a society in crisis, economic collapse after the Great Depression, social dislocation, cultural resentment, and a desperate longing for stability. This was fertile ground for fringe ideas to take root.
My son stood absorbed, while my daughter lingered back, visibly uneasy. The narrative detailed how the Nazis weaponized fear, presenting themselves as restorers of order. They did not overthrow Democracy overnight; they slowly hollowed it out from within.
I felt an absurd urge to warn the Germans of the 1930s. “Can’t you see where this leads?” But we were only visitors, armed with the tragic knowledge of what came next.
