Each year, we encourage the schools we work with to participate in the Holocaust Art & Writing Contest organized by the Rodgers Center for Holocaust Education at Chapman University in Orange County, California. While preparing for the contest, the students select and view testimonies of Holocaust Survivors and create films, prose or poetry based on their recollections. The organizers prepared testimonies of Michał Głowiński, Janina Bauman and Teresa Prekerowa for Polish participants. The competition is based on something that is very important in our thinking about education: direct use of testimonies of witnesses of history, learning from such accounts, passing on the message of the Survivors. That is why we encourage teachers and students to use the USC Shoah Foundation resources and search for accounts about their towns and the surroundings.

This year, among 220 schools from 13 countries that participated in the contest, 13 were from Poland. A student from Romuald Traugutt High School in Warsaw was selected as one of the finalists. Congratulations to all involved in this important project!