In February, we held a series of meetings as part of the Zoom in on the Forum, which allows us to keep in touch with recipients of our program and our allies despite the limitations of the pandemic.  We organized two guided virtual tours: of Israel for Polish viewers, and of Lodz for foreign audiences. Polish viewers also had the opportunity to see and learn more about the newly opened permanent exhibition on the history of the Sobibór extermination camp and Operation Reinhardt at the Sobibór Museum and Memorial during a meeting with Museum Director Tomasz Oleksy-Zborowski.

We also held a series of substantive meetings for an international audience, including one on Holocaust research in Poland. Two researchers from the Polish Academy of Sciences, Agnieszka Haska, a sociologist and anthropologist and Krzysztof Persak, a historian,  discussed the growing body of scholarly work on the Shoah in Poland. They presented the most important findings and the public perception of publications describing the fate of Jews and the attitudes of Poles during and immediately after World War II.

Since many international Friends of the Forum are interested in the state of civil society, education and the politics of remembrance in Poland, we invited Agata Szczęśniak, a journalist and political commentator, to talk about the current political and societal affairs in Piland. We also met with Patrycja Dołowy, who shared her thoughts on literature and art devoted to the experiences of Jewish women in 20th-century Poland.