School of Dialogue at Educational Association Social Junior High School

| 2018 |

Gorzów is a small town with no Jewish history. However, it is located just a few minutes away from Oświęcim, a town well known to all project participants, as most of them had visited the former German concentration camp of Auschwitz-Birkenau. Due to the proximity of the camp, students boasted considerable knowledge about the Holocaust. However, not all of them were aware of Oświęcim’s fascinating prewar Jewish history.

For their School of Dialogue project, students conducted interviews with former Auschwitz prisoner Zdzisława Włodarczyk and with Masza Kurhańska, who told them about her experience of being a young Jewish Pole living close to world’s largest former concentration camp. The tour was addressed to fellow Gorzów students, who were thus taken on a field trip to Oświęcim to explore its prewar past and learn about the town’s sizeable Jewish community, the famous Vodka and Liquor Manufacturer Haberfeld as well as the friendship between rabbi Eliasz Bomback and Catholic priest Jan Skarbek.

The group visited Oświęcim’s Jewish museum located in the former synagogue as well as the house of the last local Jewish resident, who returned to the town after World War II. The tour itinerary also included a stop in the headquarters of a Roma association to see the exhibition about the local Roma population. Throughout the tour, the group admired murals scattered throughout Oświęcim that reference local history, including the piece created by famous Polish painter and graphic artist Edward Dwurnik.

Photos: S. Gotowski, A. Stasiuk

Gorzów Wielkopolski

School: Educational Association Social Junior High School
Students: 2nd year
Teacher: Elżbieta Grochola
Educators: Szymon Gotowski, Antonina Stasiuk

Contributors

Project cofinanced thanks to the generosity of Friends of the Forum and individual donors and institutions from Poland and abroad supporting Forum for Dialogue.