These past months Forum friends and allies from all over the world participated in a zoom in on the Forum cycle dedicated to teaching about Jewish history in Poland. We discussed how to teach young people about Jewish culture and religion, and how to inspire them to take action in their communities and commemorate local Jewish heritage. We’ve explained the philosophy behind the School of Dialogue program, and the reasons why we’ve been running it for the past 12 years in schools all over Poland. Forum’s Izabela Meyza and Julia Machnowska outlined the challenges of teaching about Jews and Jewish history within the framework of the Polish school system. Mirosław Skrzypczyk, a Leader of Dialogue, a teacher and an activist, shared his experience of decades of involvement in transferring knowledge of Jewish history and culture to his students and motivating them to take action.

The last of the series’ meetings is still ahead of us and it will be focused on a discussion of a documentary film about the School of Dialogue program, 800 Jews from Our Town, directed by Filip Luft. In 2015, Luft accompanied School of Dialogu students from Bircza as they discovered and commemorated a site where local Jewish residents were killed during the war.

We’ve kicked off the first online version of the School of Dialogue program with 20 schools from all cross Poland who will begin working on their projects soon. Given the unique situation we’re keeping the application process open for schools which so far have not yet had an opportunity to join our program. More on how to apply HERE (Polish only).

Due to social distancing and lockdown measures introduced in Poland, Forum educators and the students will join the workshops from their homes. Our educators have had ample training for the remote teaching setting and are confident that this new method will yield great results!

The online School of Dialogue program includes four Zoom meetings with Forum educators, the aim of which is to introduce students to basics of Jewish history and culture in Poland, the fate of Jews during the Holocaust, and the diversity of Jewish life today. The students are also invited to consider issues of social identity, stereotypes, and membership in social groups. The educators also provide students with methods of project work and design the project schedule together, which they will follow under the supportive eye of their teacher. The students are expected to engage in independent research of the history of their local Jewish community, the result of which will be a virtual walking tour of the Jewish sites of their towns advertised to the general public.

Depending on the state of the pandemic, students may plan additional activities addressed to a wider public, including a walking tour of the town, or an exhibition of archival photographs discovered when researching the town’s Jewish past.

We can’t wait to be wowed and surprised with the student projects this year!

In September we hosted a series of the “Zoom in on the Forum” meetings dedicated to our international friends and programs alumni. The series titled “How is Poland Important to Jews?” aimed to create a space for a debate on the role and significance of Poland and its Jewish heritage to Jews from all over the world. Meetings with experts, dr. Kamil Kijek from the University of Wroclaw and a member of Forum’s Scholarly Advisory Board, and Konstanty Gebert initiated a discussion on the history of Polish Jews before and after the Shoah and its meaning for the contemporary Jewish community. The extensive format of thematic sessions provided the participants with space for a discussion about their relationship with Polish/Jewish relations in the past and nowadays as well as Forum’s role in that matter.

For over two decades, Forum for Dialogue has been dedicated to inspiring new connections between contemporary Poland and the Jewish people from abroad. Our efforts are based on mutual dialogue and openness towards various perspectives on the history and Polish/Jewish relations. As a result, we created a community of people who share our values and beliefs. When the global pandemic forced us to adjust our programs to an online format, we initiated a series of virtual meetings with our friends and supporters on the Zoom platform. The new tool allowed us to continue conversation on crucial subjects regardless of the situation. So far we have held over 20 sessions during which we explored different attitudes towards Poland and its Jewish past. Leaders of Dialogue shared their sense of responsibility for the Jewish heritage of their localities, while descendants of Polish Jews underlined the meaning of rebuilding bonds with places their families came from. For each program participant Poland has a different and unique meaning. That’s why we dedicated a separate series of meetings to such a complex subject to better understand the common Polish/Jewish history and its impact on us.

As students return to schools after the summer holidays Forum is fine-tuning the materials for the fall semester of the School of Dialogue program. Due to the unpredictability of the health situation and the many unknowns related to the ways in which schools will be operating in the fall, we have developed a new online version of our educational program run remotely by Forum educators.

Based on the School of Dialogue lesson plans, we have created a new formula for the Online School of Dialogue based on efficient online communication channels. As before, the program will involve 4 workshops, but adopted to the new reality of working with students remotely.

In the upcoming weeks, we will introduce the new formula, including new materials and tools, to the Forum educators, and mid-September we will open the application process for schools. We’re very excited about what the new semester brings!

It is with great sadness that we have learned this morning of the passing of Henryk Wujec, the Chair of the Forum’s Board of Trustees. He was a communist-era oppositionist, activist, and politician. In the times of the Polish People’s Republic, he was one of the founders of the Workers’ Defense Committee, a political prisoner, and a legend of the Solidarity movement. After the fall of communism, he was a Member of Parliament and an Advisor to the President of Poland. In all of this, he was always approachable, direct, and modest. We saw Henryk when he visited Forum’s Schools of Dialogue and activists, and met with foreign guests, always open and cheerful, he made people comfortable in his presence. They knew they were meeting a real icon, but he would joke and share with them his life stories and experiences. He listened, asked questions, and wanted to understand. He was always curious about people and places: his host, the school principal, the students, or the initially confused foreign visitors.

Each year, at the School of Dialogue Gala we anticipated his annual speech. We knew it was going to be acute, witty, and profound. The most memorable in recent years were his words at the Gala happening just a month after the biggest crisis in Polish/Jewish relations caused by the proposed amendment to the Polish Anti-Defamation Law, the so-called Holocaust Law. In reference to a prewar article by Stanisław Stomma, entitled “Upstream on the Niagara,” he addressed the audience with these words: “You, too, are paddling upstream on the Niagara, as you oppose this global, not just Polish, rising wave of nationalism. Back then the fight was not entirely successful. Let’s hope that these experiences and the fact that there are so many of you here, all equally courageous as Stanisław Stomma, will lead to a great success and that we’ll prevent humanity and Poland from things to be ashamed of.”

Poland lost a hero today, and Forum for Dialogue lost a dear Friend. Without Henryk Forum would not be what it is today. All of us – the Forum team, our friends and allies – will miss him very much. Ludko, Pawle, Kasiu, we’re thinking of you in this hour of need.

For an organization such as the Forum, whose mission is realized mostly through direct contact and conversation, the pandemic poses a real challenge. Nevertheless, despite restrictions, we do not lose track of what is important in our work. This time of isolation has been an opportunity for us to tighten our relations with our friends and participants of our programs from Poland, Israel, and the U.S. We see them each week at the newly launches Zoom in on the Forum sessions of online meetings. Our international friends and allies have an opportunity to participate in calls that aim to, among others, introduce them to Leaders of Dialogue or present a story of reconnections between descendants of Jews from a Polish town with its current inhabitants. This June, we have also begun Polish sessions addressed to participants or affiliates of the Leaders of Dialogue, Shared Heritage, and School of Dialogue programs.

Up until now, we had an honor to host meetings with esteemed individuals, such as Dariusz Stola, the former Director of the POLIN Museum or George Elbaum, a Holocaust Survivor, who shared his life story and explained why it is so important for him to have young people hear it. We have also hosted a meeting on the temporary exhibition at the POLIN Museum “This is Muranów”, whose co-curators, Jacek Leociak and Zofia Waślicka-Żmijewska talked about the ideas behind the exhibition, working with archeological artefacts found during the construction of the museum building, and artistic projects connected with the exhibition.

These meetings offer an opportunity to not only learn more about Forum’s programs and the issues we deem important, but also for us to learn more about the community of friends and allies, inspire, and learn from one another. The sessions are a unique space in which we remind ourselves about what unites us: a shared sensitivity towards Polish/Jewish relations.

This July Forum organized online workshops for teachers in our School of Dialogue network dedicated to “Using Images of the Shoah in Teaching Practice.” The participants discussed the challenges of teaching about the Holocaust.

One of such challenges is the historical documentation to be used in class. Nazis used to document their extermination of Jews on photographs and film, and thus created the image repertoire most associated with the Holocaust. The participants of the workshop used the most recognizable images from that archive and considered their educational impact and the consequences of using perpetrator-centered images. Taking the victims subjectivity as their starting point, the participants discussed how and if to show images of the Holocaust when teaching about it. They shared personal experiences and good practices used in class, the teachers created ways of using the images in a way that ensures the victims their dignity and takes into account students’ sensitivities.

Another challenge addressed in the unusual time of the epidemic is remote teaching. The workshop participants considered the greatest issues of teaching about the Holocaust using online tools in the event that schools are not back this fall.

The workshop was conducted by Izabela Meyza, a cultural anthropologist, mediator and emphatic communication coach, who for many years has been working with the Forum, and who is one of the authors behind the School of Dialogue educational materials.