5th International Summer School for Teachers – “Teaching about the Holocaust”

Maria Zawadzka, 16 November 2016
From July 1st to July 6th, 2010 in Krakow took place the 5th International Summer School “Teaching about Holocaust”, organized by the Centre for Holocaust Studies of the Jagiellonian University. 60 teachers, trainers, students, activists and leaders of non-governmental organizations focusing their activity on Holocaust studies took part in the classes. The sessions were organized in the Institute of European Studies of the Jagiellonian University, at 13 Jodłowa Street in Krakow.

The lecturers of the Summer School are experts and academic teachers from Poland, the United States and Israel. This year among them were Prof. Jan Tomasz Gross, Prof. Zdzisław Mach, and Tomasz Blatt, participant of the uprising of the inmates of the death camp in Sobibor. The organizers of the Summer School offered to the participants numerous lectures, screenings, discussions and workshops. There has also been a visit of the Memorial and Museum Auschwitz-Birkenau, the Auschwitz Jewish Center, and the Galicia Museum in the district of Kazimierz in Krakow.

During the Summer School, on Tuesday, July 6th took place classes devoted to the Righteous Among the Nations: “Righteousness after the Holocaust” and “The Rescuers of Jews and the Righteous” (Prof. Feliks Tych). On July 2nd a meeting was organized – the participants had the occasion to talk to Aaron Elster, saved by Polish Righteous – the late Franciszka Górska and Hipolit Górski, who had been hiding him and his sister Irena in their house in Sokołów Podlaski. The siblings stayed in the house of the Górskis until the Russians entered the town. Aaron Elster, currently the deputy director of the Illinois Holocaust Museum & Education Center, told his story in the book “I still see her haunting eyes”.

The participation in the free classes is supposed to develop knowledge about the teaching skills of the participants, their methods of teaching about the Holocaust, and help them establish cooperation with other teachers focusing on this subject. The organizers want to build an open and tolerant society through including the teaching about the Holocaust in the Polish educational system.

The program is a joint enterprise of Polish and foreign institutions: the Centre for Holocaust Studies of the Jagiellonian University, the Institute of European Studies of the Jagiellonian University, the International Center for Education about Auschwitz and the Holocaust in the Memorial and Museum Auschwitz-Birkenau, the Illinois Holocaust Museum and Education Center, and Yad Vashem.

The sponsor of the 5th International Summer School “Teaching about Holocaust” is Claims Conference. The Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany.

More information about the Summer School can be found on the website of the Centre for Holocaust Studies of the Jagiellonian University.