News
Educating about Auschwitz in penitentiaries
A group of several dozen Silesian district directors of the Prison Service were at the Auschwitz Museum for a one-day seminar “Auschwitz—history—civic education”, done in cooperation with the International Center for Education About Auschwitz and the Holocaust and the Prison Service. Representatives from all jails and prisons located in Śląsk visited the Museum site and learned about the Museum’s collection as well as watched selected documentaries showing Auschwitz in films.
The seminar was an occasion for discussions on the subject of cooperative educational work and its possibilities when done in correctional institutions. The proposal for cooperation between the Museum and the Silesian District Prison Service was the interesting and successful project done in the spring of 2009 by the Museum with the District Prison Service in Krakow.
'Until the end of this year, the Museum will carry out two projects in parallel' Antoni Stańczyk from the International Center for Education About Auschwitz and the Holocaust said. 'One will be a continuation, the second part of the continuing cooperation with the prison service of Małopolska. The second, with the prison service of Silesia, which starts with this very meeting with its'.
The effect of this special educational and re-socialization project, chosen groups of prisoners have the opportunity to visit the Auschwitz Museum and take part in an educational seminar. At the same time, historians and educators from the Museum are going with presentations, exhibitions, and lectures to correctional institutions.
“It would be naive to believe that the visit by convicts to the former Nazi German Concentration and Extermination Camp of Auschwitz will be a remedy for a better life”—wrote Jacek Matrejek in the last edition of “Forum Penitencjarne”, a monthly for workers and guards in the Prison Service. “But there is faith that they will enrich their historical and civic knowledge, making an impact on their moral attitudes.”
