When Mark Barga, a history teacher at Pittsburgh Westinghouse 6-12, went to Poland in July as one of the teachers subsidized by Classrooms Without Borders for Poland Personally: An International Study Seminar, he found the experience “transformative,” he says. “In Poland, I confronted a very simple truth about teaching the Holocaust as a history teacher: No mastery of textbooks, journals, videos, or even primary documents can communicate the complexity and the astonishing moral, social, political, and now historical challenges left by the Holocaust. Visiting these sites with a man who survived them made the experience an occurrence more special than I can express.”
Barga was one of 47 teachers and students who went with a Holocaust survivor and scholar Avi Ben-Hur — led by CWB Executive Director Dr. Zipora (Tsipy) Gur – to Poland for the 10-day study seminar. Barga was joined by teachers from Sewickley Academy, Winchester Thurston School, Ellis School, Shady Side Academy, Columbus School for Girls in Ohio and Wheeling Park High School in West Virginia, as well as students from Winchester Thurston, Ellis, Shady Side, Columbus and The Kiski School.
Seminar participants had many unique experiences: The Israeli embassy in Poland invited the group to a special reception honoring righteous gentiles, while the mayor of Howard Chandler’s hometown, Wierzbnik-Starachowice, held a large reception. The group met with the grandson of a Nazi soldier who had just published a book about World War II, and enjoyed the International Festival of Jewish Culture, a klezmer festival attended by 10,000 people — in a town that still only has 400 Jewish residents – and were joined by famed Klezmer clarinetist David Krakauer for Friday night dinner.
The group explored Poland’s Jewish history from Warsaw to Lublin and the Nazi camps. The seminar included visits to the Okopowa Street Jewish Cemetery, Krakow’s Jewish quarter, synagogues and royal artifacts, the Warsaw Ghetto, Majdanek, Auschwitz, Birkenau and Treblinka, the extermination camp where Howard Chandler’s mother, sister and younger brother were killed.
As Rabbi Michael Schudrich, the Chief Rabbi of Poland, told the group when he met with participants during the seminar, in words recalled by Shady Side Academy student Danielle Plung: “Remembrance is hardly enough. We must take it and do something with it — for the rest of humanity, and also for ourselves.”
Most important for the teachers: After they gained their seminar experience, they are now integrating its lessons into their curricula.
“Having the chance to visit the places that I teach about is extremely valuable for me as an educator and scholar,” says Kyle Smith, head of the social studies department at Shady Side Academy. “The visceral nature of simply ‘being there’ has really challenged me to think of more creative ways to get my students to experience in depth the places and events that they are learning about.”
“My classroom this year will investigate the Holocaust through a far more robust understanding of Jewish life before, during, and after the Nazi occupation of Poland,” says Mark Barga. “Materials from my seminar to Poland – pictures, videos, journals – will enhance the curriculum in a way most teachers frankly cannot provide their students.”
The teenage seminar participants will team with teachers this year to prepare a Holocaust teaching unit for their schools’ 8th graders, and they plan to raise money to send Urban Pathways Charter School students from disadvantaged neighborhoods to visit the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington D.C., part of the Smithsonian Institution. The students will also pass on the lessons they learned to their peers. As student Dani Plung wrote in the Poland Personally blog, after visiting Treblinka: “I recalled one of the verses the group had read as we lit candles: ‘This last candle is dedicated to us — the next generation. We must bear witness to what has happened after all the other candles are extinguished and there is no one but ourselves who are left to carry the flames of remembrance.”
“I am such an enthusiastic supporter of the trips that Tsipy leads,” concludes
Tom Cangiano, president of Shady Side Academy, “and I’ve already been talking to colleagues about applying for upcoming trips. No one can imagine how much they will get out of the trips. For students, the experience is life-changing; for faculty, the experience is so powerful and enriching.”