Since March 2020, the Forum team has been working remotely. This was motivated by our sense of responsibility and concern over the well-being of our staff, as well as the recipients of our programs. As a result, we were forced to cancel the conferences, seminars, and other activities we had planned for the year that involved having many people meet directly in one place. Though we cannot meet face-to-face, we do not stop the work of maintaining old and making new connections between people dedicated to Polish/Jewish dialogue. We have been successful in adapting our existing programs to the new online reality, so we can continue Forum mission in these changed circumstances.

The first challenge on our path was the School of Dialogue Gala, which we shifted online. With an audience of over two thousand students, teachers, and friends and allies of the Forum we awarded the School of Dialogue participants for their incredible efforts. You may read more about #GalaOnline here.

The next challenge was staying in touch with the Forum community and getting people involved in the Forum mission. Since March we have been working hard to offer an array of online meetings for various groups of Forum program recipients.

These online sessions include meetings with experts and scholars working on Polish/Jewish issues, but also help network various groups of Forum friends and allies, who can now discuss in real time their motivations and experiences. This online formula is a unique opportunity for our program recipients and friends from Poland, Israel, and the US to meet and talk.

We have also introduced changes in our Leaders of Dialogue program encouraging leaders from one region to connect and work together in regional groups that enhance networking and enable joint projects. You may read more about Leaders of Dialogue regional groups here, but so far we inaugurated four groups in four regions, and more are coming. These groups meet and plan online to ensure that the work is not stopped by the pandemic.

Yesterday, Polish authorities and public health institutions recommended that all indoor events for more than one thousand people should be canceled. In consequence of those announcements we have decided to cancel tomorrow’s School of Dialogue Gala held at the Teatr Wielki – Polish National Opera in Warsaw.

We were hoping against hope that such a cancellation will not be required, as the Gala enables us to honor the dedication and involvement of students from all over Poland in commemorating their local Jewish communities. It is a unique moment when we can show how important this memory of Polish/Jewish history and heritage is in and for Poland.

Given the pressing epidemiological concerns and recommendations from official institutions, calling the Gala off is the only rational decision. The health and safety of the students, teachers, and Forum’s friends and allies is our top priority.

We will be announcing the winners of the School of Dialogue commemoration project competition shortly, as their hard work will not remain unrecognized.

In winter 2020, Forum run two seminars for teachers about teaching Polish/Jewish history using Roberta Grossman’s documentary, Who Will Write our History, depicting the history of the Ringelblum’s Archive, a secret archive of the Warsaw Ghetto.

The first seminar took place in Lublin at the Brama Grodzka – NN Theatre, and the second one was held in Kielce at the Jan Karski Association’s educational space. These workshop-style seminars were dedicated to testing out classroom activities and discussions. Inspired by the mission of Oneg Shabbat, we developed ways of teaching about Jews and their history using their own voices as recorded in documents and artifacts sensitively, so that we incorporate the way they wanted to be remembered in death and life. We also introduced the Ringelblum Archive as a great resource for creating just such an approach to Jewish history. A key element of the seminars was presenting ways of researching the archive to find information about the teachers’ local history and how to find testimonies of Jews from their towns.

The conclusion of each seminar was a conversation with a teachers and Leaders of Dialogue: Marek Kołcon in Lublin and Mirosław Skrzypczyk in Kielce. The experts talked about their activism to inspire other teachers to take on the task of commemorating Jews and the Jewish past of their towns. Upon completion of the seminar each teacher received a Who Will Write our History DVD and a copy of education kit with lesson plans designed by the Forum on the basis of the film.

Educational initiatives related to Who Will Write Our History have been made possible thanks to the generosity of Al and Gayle Berg Family Foundation.