The Forum for Dialogue team and educators met at the holiday party yesterday. In a friendly festive atmosphere we talked about our achievements and plans for the future. It was good to catch up and see each other!

We finished our last study trip this year. Check out some photos from the events during the trip. Enjoy!

The project is co-financed from the funds granted by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in the competition for the public task “Cooperation with Polish Diaspora and Poles Abroad in 2015.”

The Young Leaders of Dialogue, participants of the Summer School of Dialogue, met in Warsaw for a follow-up workshop. On Saturday the students talked about how to fight prejudice, and discussed Catholic-Jewish relations with father Grzegorz Michalczyk. The evening brought the Young Leaders together with Forum’s Educators. It was a unique opportunity to get to know each other and share experiences. Together, they watched a documentary titled “800 Jews From Our Town” about the participants of the School of Dialogue in Bircza. On the final day of the workshop the Young Leaders had a chance to talk with a very distinguished guest, the Deputy Ambassador of Israel, Ruth Cohen-Dar. The follow-up weekend workshop was made possible by the support of the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany and the Pratt Foundation.

We’ve just said goodbye to the participants of our October study trip to Poland. Our guests from the U.S., Canada and Australia have spent the beginning of last week in Warsaw. They braved the cold to tour Warsaw, visited the POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews, learned about the political transition in Poland since the 1989, discussed the contemporary Warsaw Jewish community over lunch at JCC Warsaw and visited the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to talk about Poland’s relation to the Jewish diaspora. From Warsaw the group continued to Ożarów, visiting students who had participated in our School of Dialogue program in 2014, and then to Kraków. The program ended with one of the most inspiring meetings: with Mr. Mirosław Skrzypczyk, a Leader of Dialogue, who told us about his remarkable work preserving the memory of Jewish communities in Lelów and Szczekociny. Thank you all for this fascinating week!

We have finished a week-long study trip for Milwaukee Jewish Educators. The participants visited Warsaw, Krakow, Auschwitz-Birkenau Museum and Memorial, took part in meetings with experts of Polish/Jewish relations and met with students from School of Dialogue in Krzepice. For many the highlight of the trip, a very moving moment, was to hear a Polish student from Krzepice sing the prayer Avinu Malkeinu in front of the synagogue ruins there. During the week, the participants were also working on ideas about how to incorporate the experience of the study trip in their teaching practices. We are happy that they referred to this trip as to a life-changing learning experience.

We said goodbye to the participants of our October study trip to Poland. Our guests from the U.S., Canada and Australia have spent the beginning of last week in Warsaw. They braved the cold to tour Warsaw, visited the POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews, learned about the political transition in Poland since the 1989, discussed the contemporary Warsaw Jewish community over lunch at JCC Warsaw and visited the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to talk about Poland’s relation to the Jewish diaspora. From Warsaw the group continued to Ożarów, visiting students who had participated in our School of Dialogue program in 2014, and then to Kraków. The program ended with one of the most inspiring meetings: with Mr. Mirosław Skrzypczyk, a Leader of Dialogue, who told us about his remarkable work preserving the memory of Jewish communities in Lelów and Szczekociny. Thank you all for this fascinating week!

October 2-4, we held the 1st Local Conference of Leaders of Dialogue. Apart from the annual Leaders of Dialogue conferences, which we organize in Warsaw, we want to meet our leaders in the places where they actually do their work. This time we visited them in Będzin, Gliwice, Zabrze, Wielowieś and Toszek.

The Local Conference of Leaders of Dialogue was co-financed from funds granted by the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany (Claims Conference), the Dutch Jewish Humanitarian Fund and the Pratt Foundation.

Thanks to Karolina and Piotr Jakoweńko (Brama Cukermana), Dariusz Walerjański and Grzegorz Kamiński we spent a very intensive weekend, getting to know the history of Jewish culture in Zagłębie and Upper Silesia.
The goal of the meeting was to present the work of the local Leaders there: their everyday work for the Polish-Jewish dialogue and commemoration of Jewish history. The meeting created a space in which we could share and exchange experiences and inspiration. As a group, supportive of each other, we are much stronger.

We finished a study trip for lecturers, journalists, representatives of the media and social activists from Israel. During a week-long stay in Poland the participants visited Warsaw, Kraków and Auschwitz-Birkenau Museum and Memorial. They met a Leader of Dialogue Ms. Barbara Tkacz from Radoszyce and the alumni of Forum’s educational program the School of Dialogue in Krasnosielc. The students took our guests on a walking tour around Jewish sites of the town. The participants had a chance to listen to the Ambassador of Israel to Poland Ms. Anna Azari, Program Director of the Core Exhibition of the Museum of the History of Polish Jews POLIN Professor Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, as well as other academics and representatives of the Jewish community. At the end of the trip the participants shared with us that this trip has made them rethink almost everything they had known about Poland, that it totally changed their perceptions and opinions about Poland and deepened their understanding of the common Polish-Jewish history. We are happy the trip was successful and we hope to stay in touch and do more together in the future!

In August, the first-ever Summer School of Dialogue took place. This new project was created for alumni students of School of Dialogue who were highly involved in Polish/Jewish dialogue. During a week-long stay, the participants in the project learned how to manage social projects and conduct interviews, practiced working in teams and discovered the basics of the Yiddish language. They visited the Museum of the History of Polish Jews (POLIN), met Michael Schudrich, the Chief Rabbi of Poland, and representatives of Jewish youth organizations. The participants in the program will lead their own projects in Polish/Jewish relations in their towns through the end of the year.

The project is co-financed from the funds granted by the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany (Claims Conference) and the Pratt Foundation.

We finished a week-long study trip for US teachers and educators collaborating with Facing History and Ourselves. It was already a third such trip to Poland organized by Forum for Dialogue in partnership with Facing History and Ourselves and Polish Embassy in Washington. The participants visited Warsaw, Krakow, Auschwitz-Birkenau Museum and Memorial and met with students from School of Dialogue in Końskie. For many the highlight of the trip was a meeting with Leaders of Dialogue Narcyz Listkowski and Michał Rapta in Rabka-Zdrój, who told our guests about their work preserving the Jewish heritage of their town. During the week, the participants were also working on ideas about how to incorporate the experience of the study trip in their teaching practices. We are happy that they referred to this trip as to a life-enhancing week, wonderful learning experience and an eye-opening adventure time.