2023 Poland Personally: A Study Seminar to Poland

Itinerary

2023 Poland Personally Seminar

• Theme of the Day: One Thousand Years of Jewish Life in Poland. The View from Warsaw
• Sites & Activities: Polin Museum (**short guided tour of no more than one hour), Okopowa St. Jewish Cemetery (Gesia), the Nozyk Synagogue with a meeting with the Chief Rabbi of Poland, Plac Grzybowski & Prozna Street, Old Warsaw, dinner with Author and Journalist Anna Bikont

• To give our participants a good sense of the rich Jewish civilization that the Nazis attempted to erase
• To contemplate the “absence of presence” & the “presence of absence”
• To begin the process of fleshing out the dilemmas and challenges facing Polish Jewry as Poland entered the modern era and the variety of responses and solutions that were attempted by the eve of the Shoah
• To learn about Jewish religious life in Poland today and what might be the prospects of survival of Polish Jewry in the future.
• To examine the changing historical narrative of Polish Jewry in the past decade as per the Polish government’s policies
• Overnight: Warsaw

• Theme of the Day: The Largest Ghetto in Nazi-Occupied Europe - 1940-1943. - Dilemmas of Jewish Life, Death and Resistance in the Ghetto
• Sites & Activities: Jewish Ghetto, Czerniakow home, Janusz Korczak Orphanage, Umschlagplatz, Mila 18, Rappaport Memorial, Treblinka death camp

• To attempt and reconstruct life & death in the Warsaw Ghetto through the prism of the few physical remains that survived the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising of April-May 1943
• To learn about the dilemmas facing the Jewish leadership of the Ghetto, as well as ordinary individuals, educators and civil society at large
• To unpack the challenges facing the Jewish underground before, during and after the Uprising.
• To examine the ways the Ghetto and the Uprising have been commemorated in Poland.
• To begin our study of the Nazi ways and means of genocide – with a focus on the model of the extermination camps, particularly within the context of Operation Reinhard

• Theme of the Day: The Nazi System of Extermination and Concentration Camps in Europe
• Sites & Activities: Lublin-Old Town-Grodzka NN Theater, Majdanek Concentration Camp

• To expose our participants to a local Polish educational initiative that tries to teach Poles about their vanished Jewish neighbors/co-citizens
• To enter a dialogue with Polish educators about dilemmas and best practices regarding the presentation of historical narrative
• To potentially create future collaboration between the American and Polish educators
• To learn about the network of camps that the Nazis created – both within Germany and without – with the aim of contextualizing Majdanek within the overall framework of the Final Solution
• To actively use primary sources as a tool to peek into the horror of life & death in the camps
• To examine the way Poland commemorates what transpired in Majdanek and to start the internal discussion of how to bring the experience of the visit here back into the classroom

• Theme of the Day: Bearing Witness and Grappling with the Question of Justice
• Sites: The town of Wierzbnik-Starachowice, Tarnow

• To view the events of the Shoah through the eyes of a victim/participant
• To give our participants what might be the final opportunity to visit the “scene of the crime” with a survivor and bear witness
• To grapple with the big questions revolving around justice after the Shoah; what would constitute justice? Who should be doing the judging? Was justice served and if not, then why not?

• Theme of the Day: Auschwitz - the Decline of Humanity
• Sites: Auschwitz I Concentration Camp Museum, Auschwitz-Birkenau – the Extermination Camp

• To continue to bear witness through the eyes of our accompanying survivor who spent time here
• To attempt to understand the ramified system of exploitation, abuse and murder that the Nazis created at Auschwitz
• To enable our participants to have time to reflect and experience the site with some unmediated time
• To speak about some of the special/unique aspects about the Shoah as reflected in Auschwitz

• Theme of the Day: Krakow - Jewish Life in Krakow before the Holocaust
• Sites: Kazimierz - Jewish Quarter, Old City and Market Square, and remains of the Ghetto. Optional tour of the Old Town in the afternoon - St. Mary's Church, Wawel Castle, Main Market Square

• To get a deeper understanding of pre-War Jewish life in a large cosmopolitan Polish city
• To learn about Jewish practices and rituals as reflected in the many extant pre-War synagogues
• To meet with members of the present Jewish community of Krakow
• To meet with Ukrainian refugees that the Jews of Krakow have been taking care of

• Sites: Wieliczka salt mines
• Overnight: Warsaw

Press Coverage

• LOCAL TEACHERS VISIT POLAND WITH HOLOCAUST SURVIVORS

• Holocaust Survivor Guides Local Teachers Through Auschwitz