Forum for Dialogue wanted to make young people aware of the sites related to Warsaw’s Jewish history. For this reason, our organization was the first to offer tours of Jewish Warsaw for high school students. There were four routes to choose from: tour of Jewish cemetery at ul.Okopowa, tour of the area around pl.Grzybowski, tour of the former ghetto area and tour of Jewish Praga. On what street did the synagogue stand in Praga district? How did the ghetto borders run? What was Próżna street like before the war? “I don’t know” would be the answer to these questions by most of Warsaw’s high school students. To gain knowledge in this subject matter, teenagers were invited to experiential history lessons that presented the forgotten Jewish side of Warsaw. The tours were meant to acquaint young people with sites connected to the city’s Jewish history. These outdoor activities were more than mere field trips or history lessons; a significant part of each tour focused on group work of the students with sources provided by the organizers. The tours have now become an integral part of School of Dialogue Warsaw program. Tour routes:

“Stories Behind the Stones” is a tour in the course of which students explore the area of Warsaw’s Jewish cemetery, working with visual aids in the form of photographs and material objects. The tour acquaints students with specifics of Jewish tombstone symbolism, introducing them not only to Jewish culture, but also biographies of famous people buried at the cemetery. Much is to be gained from a cemetery visit in Warsaw, a city that was almost completely destroyed, especially when it is a large preserved cemetery; this is the best testimony to the richness and diversity of Warsaw’s Jews.

“Próżna Now and Then” gave tour participants the opportunity to explore the only street that survived the Warsaw ghetto before its renovation.

Using source documents, students attempted to reconstruct the landscape of a typical prewar Warsaw street and learned about traditions and customs of Polish Jews.At the same time, they searched for traces of the past in the contemporary street layout. The tour included a visit to the synagogue and an activity on Jewish religious holidays, where participants would use auxiliary materials to learn about the origins of the different holidays, customs and rituals connected to each of them as well as the traditional foods that are prepared for the given festivity.

“Jewish Praga” presented the unknown history of this district of Warsaw. The tour allowed participants to get acquainted not only with important events for Praga’s Jewish community, but also to visit sites testifying to Jewish presence in the district. The tour itinerary included a visit to Praga’s Jewish cemetery. Forgotten and often overlooked in the social memory of Praga residents, it is the oldest Jewish necropolis in Warsaw. Thanks to this walking tour, participants discovered sites buried in oblivion, but still testifying to Praga’s Jewish past.

“A Walk Through a Perished City” was based on an original concept of an urban game on the grounds of what used to be the Warsaw ghetto, which was delineated on maps that made students realize that the closed Jewish district existed in places many of them pass through on a daily basis. Subsequent stops within the “ghetto borders” were connected to various source texts about living conditions in the closed district and the fate of Warsaw’s Jewish community during World War II.

The program was implemented between September 2006 and Fall of 2007.