On Sunday, December 3, 2023, the program participants visited the Shoah Memorial of Milan. This memorial is located at Track 21 (Binario 21) of Milan Central Station (Italy’s second busiest station). Binario 21 was originally used to transport cargo and mail, but from 1943 to 1945 it was used to transport Jews and other people to concentration camps and extermination camps. Today, it serves as a memorial to learn about its history.

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　 The participants toured the station while listening to explanations from a guide. The inside of the station has not changed since the days when Jews were taken to concentration camps during World War II, and the trains that were actually used are on display.

The comments from the participants after the memorial tour included the following: “Items from the old days remain as they were, making me feel a heavy atmosphere that cannot be expressed in words. I felt like I had traveled back in time” and “I felt that the first step towards peace is to regard war as one’s own issue rather than someone else’s issue.” It seems that the participants realized that going to a foreign country and studying its history provides an opportunity to think about peace and that it is necessary to think about international peace not only from the history of their country but also from the histories of other countries.