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.