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“Auschwitz Legacy” US teachers seminar with Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial Foundation
The Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum partnered this month with the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial Foundation (ABMF) to deliver a three-day educational seminar for American teachers, as part of the 2025 Auschwitz Legacy Fellowship. The program welcomed 43 high school educators from 13 U.S. states for an intensive, week-long study visit across Poland, culminating in a three-day seminar at the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum.
The Auschwitz Legacy seminar is a central element of the Fellowship — the flagship initiative of ABMF — and is designed to provide educators with in-depth historical grounding, ethical context, and pedagogical tools for teaching the history of the German Nazi concentration and extermination camp Auschwitz. Since its launch in 2022, the Auschwitz Legacy Fellowship has reached almost 150 U.S. high schools and more than 36,500 students nationwide.
During the seminar, educators participated in guided study visits through the grounds of the sites of the former Auschwitz I and Auschwitz II–Birkenau camps, witnessed original historical evidence, and engaged with Museum’s International Center for Education about Auschwitz and the Holocaust expert staff through workshops, lectures, and direct encounters with archival materials and preservation practices.
“We are proud and grateful to partner with the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum in ensuring that teachers not only learn the facts of this history but carry forward its memory with depth, care, and responsibility,” said Dr. Maria Zalewska, Executive Director of the ABMF. “These educators become living witnesses — equipped to bring the truth of Auschwitz to students across the United States. None of this would be possible without the extraordinary educators at the Museum, whose expertise, sensitivity, and unwavering commitment to truth shape every moment of this experience.””
Throughout their time at the Museum, Fellows explored key themes including Holocaust pedagogy, ethical teaching, the preservation of memory, and the power of personal connection. They visited rarely seen parts of the Museum's Conservation Laboratories, encountered art created by prisoners in the camp and survivors after the war, and participated in small-group reflection on how to translate historical knowledge into meaningful classroom learning.
The Auschwitz Legacy Fellowship is fully funded and organized by ABMF, an American nonprofit committed to preserving the authenticity of the Auschwitz-Birkenau site and expanding Holocaust education. The Foundation’s vision, as articulated by Chairman Ronald S. Lauder, is to ensure that “the lessons of Auschwitz reach American students in all 50 states.” The ABMF is the US organization that supports the Endownment Fund of the Auschwitz-Birkenau Foundation in Poland.
This week’s seminar was part of a larger seven-day journey through Poland, including immersive study visits in Warsaw, Kraków, and Oświęcim, designed to contextualize the Holocaust within the broader history of Jewish life, loss, and postwar memory.
As educators return home, they do so not only with greater historical knowledge but with a personal commitment to share the truth of Auschwitz with the next generation — in the classroom and beyond.
