In Hiding - Stories of Survivors and of the Righteous

Redakcja, 24 November 2023

The 9th November marks the International Day of Fighting Against Fascism and Antisemitism. The day was established to commemorate the Jewish victims of the 1938 pogrom, as well as to oppose all contemporary forms of racism and intolerance. In conjunction with this anniversary, the POLIN Museum has published its latest package of educational and expert material entitled "In Hiding - Stories of Survivors and the Righteous", relating the experience of hiding and helping during World War II. Views films (discussions with experts - short films) as well as educational material (lesson plans for secondary schools).

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When preparing the educational material, we wished to present a broad context of the situation of Polish Jews in the years preceding the War and during the German occupation of Poland (1939-1945). We wished to show the diverse attitudes of Poles towards the Holocaust, while reflecting on the experience of those in hiding and to present the history of the title of Righteous Among the Nations.

All this expert material is directed at teachers. These are recorded discussion with people who, for years, have been researching and educating the topic of the Holocaust. We trust that this material will become a source of substantive and reliable knowledge, especially for those who teach difficult issues to young people.

We have also prepared lesson plans based on the stories of specific individuals - Halina Zawadzka, Lena Chojnowska, Piotr Kopiec - whose lives were marked by World War II. The proposed lesson topics refer to excerpts from educational films devoted to this topic.

This package includes five educational films. Two characters, rapper Kon and his friend Maja, discover the history of their town and its Jewish inhabitants. This becomes the inspiration for them to create musical pieces devoted to various aspects of Polish-Jewish history.

See the package of educational material: WIn Hiding - Stories of the Survivors and of the Righteous

We hope that this prepared material will be of use to you, those of you who teach about World War II in secondary schools. We encourage you to use them as selected items. They are designed to be standalone, but also as complementary and related to each other.

We especially recommend, to visitors to this Polish Righteous portal, the discussions with experts, which complement the content of its web pages.

The video recordings are listed below:.