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How to Prepare Students for Visits to the Auschwitz Memorial

The European pack for visiting Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum is a lengthy English-language resource targeting teachers and advisors planning visits to the Auschwitz Memorial. It is the result of several years of work by specialists from the International Center for Education about Auschwitz and the Holocaust at the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum, the Council of Europe, and the Polish Ministry of National Education.

"Our Center has been cooperating closely with the Council of Europe for several years. Together we organize week-long seminars for educators and teachers from Council of Europe member countries. It is these people who stressed the need for a materials pack to help them work with young people before a visit to the Auschwitz Memorial. It is therefore possible to say that the real needs of teachers were the origin of this extensive compendium of methodological remarks on the preparation, organization, and follow-up of trips to Auschwitz ," said ICEAH director Krystyna Oleksy.

The publication contains not only all essential practical information on the organization of visits, but also numerous historical texts and other materials, lesson plans, and information on the contemporary significance and functioning of the Auschwitz Memorial.

"Young people who will visit Auschwitz in the coming years will become witnesses to the last witnesses and links in the chain of remembrance," we read in the book. "Visits to the Auschwitz Memorial by school pupils are a great responsibility. They can become an important component in the forming of civic attitudes if there is a precise understanding of what Auschwitz symbolizes, especially in times when the last eyewitnesses to history are passing away."

"If an honest effort is not put into preparing and following up on visits to the Memorial, we will not form people in this place who are capable of taking action in the name of higher goals and the general good," said Alicja Białecka, who is in charge of the ICEAH program section.

The first part of the book is devoted to preparations for the visit. The subjects covered include what students should know before arriving at the Memorial, what emotions they will have to deal with during the visit, and how they can benefit from meetings with eyewitnesses to history.

"For the majority of pupils the trip will be a new kind of experience. There are lessons about how to analyze information from various sources, but no school can teach pupils how to analyze a memorial site. Students do not possess the appropriate tools for dealing with this specific reality and they are not accustomed to visiting places of this type," we read in the introduction to the chapter titled "Before the Visit."

In the second part, on the actual visit to the Auschwitz site, there is information on the history of the Museum, the work of the International Center for Education about Auschwitz and the Holocaust and other educational institutions that function around the Memorial, and a brief description of the Museum exhibition. One chapter describes the basic difficulties, both organizational and emotional, that can arise during visits.

What should be done after a group returns from the Memorial is the subject of the third part of the book. The topics covered include following up the visit and returning to normality, suggestions for interdisciplinary projects on the intersection of the history of Auschwitz and contemporary times, and several plans for lessons such as "What Should We Do with What We Learned at Auschwitz?"

In the view of Museum Director Dr. Piotr M.A. Cywiński, the new publication and the resulting well prepared visits to the Memorial will surely produce results that can be measured. "A visit to the authentic space of Auschwitz is more than education," he said. "It's an experience."

The European pack for visiting Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum can be purchased at the official online bookstore of the Council of Europe.

Contents

Preamble and acknowledgements

Auschwitz - The European dimension

The symbolism of Auschwitz and its universal message

1. Before the visit
1.1. What preparations need to be made for visiting Auschwitz and why?
1 .2. The problem of age and coping with emotion as a visitor to Auschwitz
1.3. What do students need to know before the visit?
1.4. Organising workshops to prepare students for the visit
1.5. Meeting a survivor as part of the preparatory process
1.6. Visiting Cracow and Oswiecim as a way of learning more about the culture of Polish Jews in the context of Polish history
1.7. How should you plan a visit to the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum?
1.8. Activity - How could people create such a fate for others?
1.9. Activity - Functions of "Auschwitz Concentration Camp"
1 10. Activity - Individual and collective meaning of a visit to Auschwitz
1.11. Activity - Coping with emotions at Auschwitz
1.12. Activity - Photographs of Auschwitz
1.13. Activity - Documentary films about Auschwitz

2. During the visit
2.1 . Who created the museum, and why?
2.2. Educational work and programmes offered by the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum in Oswiecim
2.3. A brief description of the exhibits at the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum in Oswiecim
2.4. Visiting the museum
2.5. What is appropriate behaviour while visiting Auschwitz?
2.6. What are the main difficulties faced during visits to Auschwitz?
2.7. International youth meetings in Oswiecim
2.8. Programmes offered by other Oswiecim-based institutions dealing with education about Auschwitz and the Holocaust

3. After the visit
3.1. How to evaluate the visit
3.2. Getting back to normality after a visit to Auschwitz
3.3. Various activities for students after their visit to Auschwitz
3.4. Suggestions for interdisciplinary projects on the relationship between Auschwitz and the present day
3.5. Meeting a survivor
3.6. Activity - "There is a station they reach, from wherever they came..."
3.7. Activity - What to do with what we learn in Auschwitz
3.8. Activity - The fate of individual victims of Auschwitz in documents, testimonies and photographs

Editors' and authors' biographies