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“Auschwitz: Memory and Education in the Context of European Identity”
“Auschwitz: Memory and Education in the Context of European Identity” is the title of this year’s seminar for educators and teachers from the member states of the Council of Europe, which took place in Kraków and Oświęcim between October 26 and 31, 2013. Methods of teaching about the Holocaust, as well as the situation of handicapped people during the Nazi times were the main issues discussed in the course of the training.
The seminar organized by the International Center for Education about Auschwitz and the Holocaust in cooperation with the Council of Europe and the Pedagogical University of Kraków was attended by eighteen educators from Belgium, France, Germany, Lithuania, the Netherlands, Great Britain and Poland.
The participants spent six days in Poland. In Kraków, they visited the former Jewish district of the city, as well as the exhibition “Kraków under Nazi Occupation 1939 – 1945” located in the administrative building of Oskar Schindler’s Emalia Factory. The educators also took part in classes at the Pedagogical University organized by the employees of the Museum, the University and the Council of Europe.
In Auschwitz, apart from a thorough visit at the site of the former German Nazi concentration and extermination camp Auschwitz, the guests also took part in many lectures, workshops and presentations devoted to the history of Auschwitz, as well as modern work and challenges faced by the Museum. The purpose of the seminar was also making the participants acquainted with the publication entitled “Preparation for the Visit at the Museum and Auschwitz Memorial Site”, thence the programme included classes presenting methods of work with pupils and principles of preparing young people for the visit at the Memorial.
One of the most moving moments of the seminar was with a meeting with the former prisoner of KL Auschwitz, Zofia Posmysz, who recounted her war-time fate to the participants and answered numerous questions.
“For me, this was a journey of the lifetime, which strengthened my conviction that the obligation that we, the educators, have is taking care that the lesson from the past is not forgotten,” said one of the seminar participants, Gunther Volk, a teacher from Germany.
The project is financed from the funds of the Council of Europe, as well as the Memorial Foundation for the Victims of Auschwitz-Birkenau.
European Workshops
A cycle of seminars which constitute fulfillment of the obligation of the Polish minister of education, Mirosław Sawicki, undertaken in the course of a seminar of European ministers of education of the Council of Europe, which took place in Kraków and Oświęcim between May 4 and 6, 2005. The theme and the programme of seminars refer to teaching about Remembrance in the context of the Holocaust Remembrance Day and prevention of crimes against humanity. The following institutions were involved in the organization of the first seminars: the Ministry of National Education, the Council of Europe, the International Center for Education about Auschwitz and the Holocaust of the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and State Museum and the Pedagogical University in Kraków.
