News
The Museum’s educational cooperation with the Dutch Anne Frank House and the French Memorial Camp des Milles
During the international education conference "Remembrance has not matured in us yet...", taking place at the Auschwitz Memorial, the Museum signed two agreements: on the realization of a three-year educational project with the Dutch Anne Frank House, as well as cooperation with the French Museum – Camp des Milles.
The Museum along with the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam will realize a three-year educational project “The Future of Auschwitz and Holocaust Education in Authentic Memorial Sites”.
Its main objectives include among others: to advance visitors knowledge on the sources of intolerance, racism, and anti-Semitism to understand the importance of respect for human rights; exchange of experience on how to connect the history of the Holocaust to contemporary issues concerning human rights; cooperation in programs for individuals or groups of visitors with special needs arising from a disability; and to advance the educational experience of studens visiting the Auschwitz Memorial through among others, online lessons.
Within the framework of the project, two online lessons will be translated into Dutch: “Auschwitz - concentration and extermination camp” and “Preparing for a visit to the Auschwitz Memorial Site.” Also to be translated into English, is the script of the project “Hard simple words” addressed to visitors with intellectual disabilities.
'This agreement will deepen our cooperation. What is important, is that we will also use the results of earlier work by Polish and Dutch teachers and educators. I hope that the fruits of this project will be a fuller understanding - primarily among young people - their responsibility in the face of such dangerous phenomena, such as intolerance, xenophobia, racism or anti-Semitism,' said the director of the Auschwitz Museum, Dr. Piotr M.A. Cywiński.
'Yearly, over a million people visit both the Anne Frank House and the Auschwitz Memorial, and their profile is constantly changing. Therefore, tours around the site should be conducted differently than for example, twenty years ago. That is why it is important to exchange common experiences, devise new methods of working with groups to show the significance of what happened in Auschwitz, and Amsterdam to the next generations,' said the director of the Anne Frank House, Ronald Leopold.
In addition, the agreement provides for the creation of a special program for "youth leaders" from Poland, who will be involved in the presentation of the exhibition "Anne Frank - a history for today" and “I’m from here. Poland of many nations.” Meetings will be organized for teachers and educators from schools and teacher training centers of both countries, as well as training and study visits to advance their knowledge about the history of the Second World War and extermination in the Netherlands. It is also addressed to educators of the Auschwitz Memorial who conduct tours for groups from this country. The entire project will be summed in an international conference scheduled for autumn 2018. The realization of the project is possible thanks to the grant decision of the Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Netherlands.
A framework cooperation agreement with Foundation of the Camp des Milles: Memory and Education, which was signed by Museum Director Dr. Piotr Cywiński and head of the French institution prof. Alain Chouraqui in the presence of the French Consul General in Cracow Thierry Guichoux, is the first of such agreement with an institution from France. It envisages the implementation of mutual science and educational projects aimed at propagating knowledge about the Holocaust.
'Camp de Milles Memorial was founded three years ago. It was a place from which people were deported to Auschwitz. For us, it is therefore extremely important to show and connect these two extreme links of this tragic chains of events - from the normality in the ceramic tiles plant in Les Milles up to the tragedy in Auschwitz,' said Prof. Alain Chouraqui.
'On this basis, we want to develop and promote activities in the field of civic education by showing the whole process of transforming people from normality to the worst tragedy. From the educational point of view it is extremely important for us to be aware that Auschwitz was not created suddenly, and there were those seemingly small places, where at the beginning things weren’t so bad, where in the beginning people were held captive for different reasons - because they were foreigners, political opponents or Jews - and then gradually the situation assumed the worst dimension. We must develop an educational cooperation around this history to show these processes and - if possible prevent them from occurring in the future,' added Chouraqui.
Camp de Milles Memorial is the only large camp of France Vichy with the authenticity preserved to such extent, from which Jews were deported for extermination during the II world war.