There haven’t been any recent posts on this blog because I have been away on a two week tour of parts of Europe, travelling by Rail. During the trip, I managed to visit both Gdansk, the city where the Second World War really started – the exact location is at Westerplatte just outside the city – although the Germans had crossed the border elsewhere in the Country at the same time.

There is now a stunning new museum on the Gdansk waterfront chronicling the Second World War and reflecting both on its causes and what came afterwards.  The museum is part of a waterfront regeneration that is similar to the transformation taking place in other port cities and towns as container ships become ever larger and berths move closer to the open sea. What Gdansk is dong reminded me of Liverpool waterfront, and the changes that have taken place in that city.

Inevitably, it is the big exhibits in the museum that catch the eye: the freight car used to transport people to concentration camps; the wall created from their suitcases and the street scene of a Russian tank in a rubble filled roadway surrounded by damaged and bullet ridden buildings. However, there are many and varied smaller exhibits and visitors from the UK will learn a lot about the fate of Poland and its population between 1939 and 1945. Personally, I would have liked to see some mention of the work of Polish forces with the allies other than in the Battle of Britain and of the Poles that stayed behind in Britain after 1945 rather than return to a Community run State, but these are personal prejudices.

Coincidentally, I also visited the Anhalter Bahnhof site in Berlin that lies close to where the Second World War in Europe came to an end. Just a symbolic remnant of this former important railway terminus now remains. It suffered the fate that although located in West Berlin, the lines using the terminus had mostly served the east of the country, areas that after the war became East Germany, until reunification almost 30 years ago. By then new routes had been established and, apart from the section of façade remaining and an S Bahn station using the name, there is little to reflect the former status of the station. The demise of Broad Street Station in London is one of the few examples of a complete obliteration of a terminus that springs to mind.

Completing the Second World War anniversaries encountered on the tour was a visit to the recently refurbished museum on the heights overlooking Toulon. This museum commemorates Operation Dragoon. This was the 1944 invasion by Allied forces of the South of France. Although smaller in scale than the much better known Normandy Landings of D-Day, some months earlier, these landing played an important part in diverting German forces away from supporting the fight in the north of France. This is an exhibition of mainly small artefacts, but none the less well worth a visit.

Happily, in 2020, we in education will have something better to remember, the 150^th anniversary of the 1870 Education Act. Recalling the horrors of war is important, but let us also find ways to celebrate the advances in society that education for all has brought to the world.