2017/2018 Fellow | German Council on Foreign Relations (DGAP e.V.) | Berlin
I am perhaps the most predictable possible participant in the BUKA program- an American working on foreign policy with German roots- and yet it was still an expansive learning experience. My BUKA year was incredibly professionally enriching, but it also gave me the chance to develop even closer relationships with German relatives who I had spent relatively little time with before coming to Germany. My grandfather immigrated to the United States in 1947 after spending much of the war in hiding and on the run from the Nazis because his mother (my great grandmother) was Jewish. It was extraordinarily meaningful to me to return to Germany and expand my understanding of that part of my family history, including a very emotional and impactful visit to Buchenwald with our BUKA group. Because of my experiences living in Germany, I was later able to conduct research on my family that helped me find information about what happened to many of my Jewish relatives during the NS-Zeit. While it was tragic to learn that many of them perished in Auschwitz, it was also meaningful to discover that they had lived just a few blocks away from where my cousins live now in Berlin. It means so much to me to be part of keeping their memory alive.
In addition to strengthening my family ties and all of the valuable professional experience I gained on the program, I was also able to visit German schools with the MeetUS program run by the US Embassy and talk with German students- many of whom had never met an American before- about studying abroad, life in the United States, and learning English. (My photo below is from a lovely visit to a school just outside of Berlin in Bad Saarow.) I had a wonderful time getting to know Germans from all over Germany during my BUKA year and would be terribly sad to see the wonderful program that enabled those connections disappear.
