At the end of July, a Polish-Israeli youth exchange was organized in Szczebrzeszyn by Magdalena Sobczuk, a graduate of the School of Dialogue. It was called “Through the Window” an idea Magdalena came up when she was participating in the Forum’s educational workshops in 2012, when she was a local high school student.

During the exchange, 10 students from the informal Israeli youth group “סובלנות” (“Tolerance”), together with their Polish counterparts, toured Szczebrzeszyn and learned about one another’s customs and traditions during workshops. During the final session of the program, they invited locals to learn about Jewish culture using art and dance as a medium. Szczebrzeszyn’s inhabitants were encouraged to look at their town from a new perspective and to embrace its multicultural history.

The Forum for Dialogue Among Nations has continued its annual partnership with the American Jewish Committee (AJC) in maintaining an exceptional exchange program focusing on Polish-Jewish relations, with the support of the Polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The program entered its consecutive year as AJC representatives from branches in Atlanta, Cincinnati, Chicago, Dallas, Los Angeles and Worchester arrived in Poland and stayed from the 7th until the 14thof July. During their stay in Poland, AJC guests participated in meetings with representatives of the academic world, publicists and representatives of the Polish Jewish community, and also visited places and institutions associated with Polish-Jewish history. During the meeting with Marcin Swiecicki, a Polish MP, they visited the building of the Polish Parliament. Another highlight of the visit was an informal gathering with the Polish alumni of the Polish Jewish Exchange Program.

While in Poland, the AJC delegation travelled to Warsaw, Lublin, Rzeszow, Tarnow, and Krakow. Visit to the site of former extermination camp in Belzec and the guided sightseeing of Museum and Memorial Auschwitz-Birkenau formed indispensable elements of their itinerary. A central topic of discussion during the visit were Polish perceptions of Jews today, phenomenon of the revival of Jewish culture in Poland, Polish post-communist transition to democracy and the future of the Polish Jewish community.

The visit turned out to be a true learning experience for all its participants. We are looking forward to the study visit of Polish participants of the Polish-Jewish Exchange Program to the USA, which is scheduled for the fall of 2013.

This groundbreaking program was opened by Prof. Wladyslaw Bartoszewski, former Minister of Foreign Affairs of Poland, prisoner of Auschwitz, honored at Yad Vashem as Righteous Among Nations and an honorary citizen of Israel. Prof. Bartoszewski spoke about the importance of local initiatives in Polish-Jewish dialogue.

Participants at the conference were selected from people from all over Poland who have been dealing with preservation of Jewish memory in their towns for many years. During two days of programs, participants shared their experiences, defined the most important needs of their group and planned activities for the future. Forum’s guests participated, as well, in a series of meetings and workshops with the experts specializing in various issues of Polish-Jewish relevance, as well as members of Warsaw’s Jewish community. Participants were also given the opportunity to visit places associated with the history of the Jewish community in Warsaw. Among others, the leaders visited the building of the Museum of the History of Polish Jews that is planned to be open in 2014.

During their stay in Poland, our guests participated in meetings with representatives of the academic world, publicists and representatives of the Polish Jewish community, and also visited places and institutions associated with Polish-Jewish history. One of the highlights of the program was a joint dinner between the American educators and participants in our Leaders of Dialogue conference. Those Leaders of Dialogue are local activists from across Poland who work to commemorate the Jewish heritage of their localities.

During their study trip, participants visited Krakow, Warsaw and the site of the former death camp in Treblinka. In Pinczow, the group met with this year’s graduates of Forum’s educational program, School of Dialogue, who took them on a guided tour of the town’s local Jewish heritage. The encounter with young memory keepers of the Jewish history of Pinczow was a particular highlight of the visit.
The study visit was the first result of cooperation between the Forum and Facing History and Ourselves. We aspire to have many more educators and teachers re-evaluating Polish-Jewish relations and thus seeing them in a new light. The project was launched in collaboration with the Polish Embassy in Washington and with the financial support of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Poland.

Last Saturday, the Forum organized a field trip to Zareby Koscielne for Polish alumni of its Polish-Jewish Exchange Program as well as other friends and associates. The participants visited one of the Schools of Dialogue, where local students took them on a tour of town’s Jewish sites. On their way to Zareby, the participants visited the site of the former Treblinka extermination camp, where they were guided by Father Wojciech Lemanski, rector of a nearby parish well known for his dedication to Christian-Jewish dialogue.

In late May, students from Jan Kochanowski Middle School in Konin participated in a field trip to Krakow and Auschwitz-Birkenau. The trip was awarded to the students for their project commemorating the local Jewish community that won first prize in Forum’s competition for 2012 School of Dialogue participants.

The program included a whole-day educational study tour of Auschwitz-Birkenau as well as sightseeing of Krakow most important sites such as the Kazimierz Jewish District, Krakow’s Old Town, Oskar Schindler’s Factory and the Galicia Jewish Museum. The trip broadened the students knowledge but also made them more sensitive towards history and its implications.

Since the beginning of the year, information on the Forum’s activities has appeared in both local and international media.
In April, the weekend edition of Haaretz featured an article entitled “Let us find the courage to ask: 70 years on, Poland takes a new look at its past.” The article was published at the time of the 70th anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising in Poland and acknowledged initiatives in building Polish-Jewish relations. In the article, some of the main topics discussed were the educational activities of the Forum, as well as the book “Difficult Questions in Polish-Jewish dialogue.”

French television channel France24 has included material from the meeting organized by the Forum with French youth in their reportage “La Pologne commémore l’insurrection du ghetto de Varsovie,” showing contemporary Polish-Jewish relations. Forum’s activities also were highlighted by la Croix in their article “Les Polonais redécouvrent douloureux passé avec les Juifs.” The article talks about the newly opened Museum of the History of Polish Jews in Warsaw, and the results of recent research regarding Polish-Jewish relations.

A Journalist from Jweekly devoted his article, “Polish attitudes about Jews now open for discussion” to the Forum’s educational program – the School of Dialogue. In May Gazeta Wyborcza published an article by Forum’s Vice-President, Michael Bilewicz, which included recent evaluation results gained from the School of Dialogue. The School of Dialogue’s work was also featured on the website of The Warsaw Voice in the article “Promoting Polish-Jewish Dialogue.”

Zuzanna Radzik, a member of Forum’s board, also appeared as an expert on two channels of Polish Public TV. She was invited as an expert to the program “Hala Odlotów” to discuss current Polish-Jewish relations. On “Kawa czy Herbata,” she was chosen to address topics such as xenophobia, intolerance and indifference.

In April, the Forum for Dialogue Among Nations organized a trip to Kazimierz Dolny for Polish participants in Forum’s Polish-Jewish Exchange Program with the American Jewish Committee. The first day entailed a meeting with students from Kazimierz Dolny middle school who had participated in the School of Dialogue 2013. After a “get-to-know-each-other” workshop, students invited guests for a joint tour of Kazimierz, visiting places once associated with Jewish life in Kazimierz. The tour was concluded with a quiz to test the knowledge of the participants.

As part of the program organized by the Forum, participants also had the opportunity to take part in a presentation on the achievements and evaluation results of the School of Dialogue program carried out by Forum team and the Center for Research on Prejudice of the University of Warsaw.

In January, the Forum organized its first open debate with Państwomiasto cafe, a continuation of the series “Forum on Chlodna” that run in 2012. The topic of the meeting: “What have we done with Jewish graves?” concerned wartime and postwar fate of Jewish tombstones and cemeteries in Poland.
During the meeting, the audience of about 50 people had a chance to hear about what had been made out of matzevot – Everything, if one needed a stone: walls, stairs, roads, tools. While the cemetery could have been recycled as a park, sports field or sandpit…
In this travel throughout Poland our guides were Łukasz Baksik, photographer and author of the “Matzevot for everyday use” photo exhibition and Agnieszka Nieradko, representative of the Rabbinical Commission on Cemeteries. The meeting was facilitated by Zuzanna Radzik, Board Member of Forum for Dialogue Among Nations.

The debate was recorded by Virtual Shtetl and can be watched online (in Polish):
http://www.sztetl.org.pl/pl/article/warszawa/19,aktualnosci/40038,24-01-2013-co-zrobilismy-z-zydowskimi-grobami-/

The open debates series organized by Forum for Dialogue Among Nations in collaboration with Państwomiasto includes monthly meetings and panel discussions on Polish-Jewish relations, featuring experts and field specialists.

In the beginning of January, 400 hundred students, their teachers and school principals as well as, international, national and local dignitaries gathered in Warsaw to celebrate the results of the program. Attendees could hear comments from such leaders as

Israeli Ambassador Zvi Rav-Ner
City of Warsaw Vice-President Wlodzimierz Paszynski
Chief Rabbi of Poland Michael Schudrich
Advisor to the President of the Republic of Poland Henryk Wujec.
In his letter to the students, the government’s Plenipotentiary for International Dialogue Prof. Wladyslaw Bartoszewski, wrote that “It is remarkable that the next generations of youth find curiosity in themselves to learn the history of their towns, they are able to restore the memory of former Jewish citizens, tell their forgotten stories to their teachers and parents”.

Students from Konin were named honorees for 2012 out of 48 schools that took part in the program. They prepared an innovative city game “Reading out stones” which they filmed and depicted in a memorial book. 2nd prize for the best commemoration project went to a high school from Lomza for designing a professional bilingual guidebook of Jewish heritage in their town. Three groups of students from Nisko, Ulanow and Warsaw achieved distinctions for their entries. Seven more schools from Bochnia, Chotylow, Frysztak, Malkinia Gorna, Pionki, Pilzno and Złotow received the Finalist Title after careful selection of projects by the Committee comprised of the Director of the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum Piotr Cywinski, member of the Warsaw Jewish Community, prof. Stanisław Krajewski , historian prof. Dariusz Stola and representatives of Forum’s Board and staff.

All participating schools received diplomas and were honored as Schools of Dialogue, with each school and participating teacher receiving a set of books on Polish-Jewish relations and history.

„Mazel Tov! – means congratulations! If you are already here, you have a prize. I thank you with all my heart. Todah Rabah – in Hebrew.“- said Rabbi Michael Schudrich as he congratulated the students.

Implementation of the School of Dialogue program in 2012 was possible thanks to the financial support of the Bureau of Education of the City of Warsaw, Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany, Dutch Jewish Humanitarian Fund, Friends of the Forum, The Pratt Foundation, Znak Publishing House and individual donors.

Awards at the 2012 School of Dialogue Gala were sponsored by the Chancellery of the Prime Minister, Czarne Publishing House Embassy of Israel in Poland, KK Radom Group, Polish Center for Holocaust Research of the Academy of Sciences, REBIS Publishing House and Znak Publishing House.