The first workshops of the new semester of the School of Dialogue program started in March. Forum educators are conducting in-person workshops at the participating schools, and facilitating the educational process helping students overcome any challenges that may arise. The commemorative projects created by the students should be ready by mid-June, but we can already share a few highlights:

Students from Kudowa-Zdrój plan to enhance their Jewish heritage tour with culinary workshops for participants. They also want to prepare a guidebook featuring descriptions of noteworthy places of Jewish heritage in Kudowa-Zdrój, as well as biographies of important figures of local Jewish community. The group from Adam Mickiewicz High School in Opole Lubelskie base their historical research on an oral history methodology: they will be interviewing history witnesses for testimonies of pre-war town and events during the World War II. Students of the St. Urszula Ledóchowska Congregation of the Ursulines High School in Pniewy are especially interested in Judaism and the history of Orthodox Jewish communities, so it will be interesting to see how will this specialized focus shape their commemorative project.

The groups from Opole Lubelskie, Nicolaus Copernicus High School No 1 in Będzin, and Maria Montessori Bilingual High School in Radom, which host refugee students from Ukraine, plan to make the projects accessible to them. Despite the language barrier, School of Dialogue emphasis on workshops fostering cooperation is proving to have a very positive outcome in this sometimes difficult situation.

Each year, the participants of previous editions of the School of Dialogue decide to continue their involvement in efforts to remember the Jewish communities of their towns and cities. This April, students from Juliusz Słowacki High School No 1 in Częstochowa decided to mark the Yom HaShoah with a virtual commemorative ceremony organized and conducted together with fellow Israeli students from Modi’in. Students of Janusz Korczak High School No 2 in Wieluń took part in the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising Campaign – Daffodils Social-Educational Campaign organized by the POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews. They also plan to mark the 80^th anniversary of the liquidation of Wieluń ghetto with a visit to Kulmhof Nazi extermination camp, where they will honor the memory of their town’s Jewish community. The group from the Academic High School in Biała Podlaska organized the “World That No Longer Exists – The History of Biała Podlaska’s Jews” conference, during which they shared the effects of their School of Dialogue historical research. Among the invited conference guests were local historians and regionalists, who presented their own research.

In 2021, the School of Dialogue was financed from two sources.

Project financed by the Active Citizens Fund – National financed by the Norwegian and EEA funds.

Project co-financed by Friends of the Forum, Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany, and individual and institutional donors from Poland and abroad.