This year, we had the great honor of organizing Study Visits for our allies and friends from the US and Canada, with whom we delved into Polish/Jewish history, Jewish heritage, and activities undertaken to preserve Jewish memory in Poland. All the tours helped strengthen connections within the Forum for Dialogue Network and enabled conversations between people who, if not for these Study Visits, might never have met. This year, two Study Visits were organized with support from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs through the grant competition “Public Diplomacy 2024”: in July, we hosted 9 Canadian educators, and in September, we met with our 11 American friends and allies.

“People aren’t different. People are the same. Especially if you learn how to talk to each other and listen to each other,” said Nancy Civin, a participant in the September Study Visit, as she reflected on the experience of discussions within the Forum for Dialogue Network. We would like to express our gratitude to all participants of this year’s visits. We appreciate their openness and willingness to engage in meaningful conversations and to create true dialogue. Being part of their meetings and building this unique international community of people who share common values has been an honor to us!

photos: Olga Detlaf, Piotr Hukało, Michalina Jadczak, Gabriela Nowak-Dąbrowska i Paweł Pawlicki

Public task financed by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Poland within the grant competition “Public Diplomacy 2024”

Forum for Dialogue Network activist Katarzyna Sudaj together with the ATUT Foundation produced the film “Sara” as a part of the project we helped co-fund via our Grants and Scholarship competitions. The film, based on the novel “Shadow of the Clock” by another member of our Network Jolanta Sroczynska-Pietz, captures the story of a friendship between Sara and Ida, two girls, one Jewish and one not, and is set in the late 19th century in Trzemeszno. “Sara” inspired great interest locally, and is now available online to the general public (with auto-generated subtitles). We encourage you to give it a try!

In 2024, the grants and scholarships program is financed thanks to the generosity of Friends of the Forum, LEDOR WADOR Foundation, United States Commission for the Preservation of America’s Heritage Abroad, and individual donors and institutions from Poland and abroad supporting Forum for Dialogue. Scholarships for personal development are possible thanks to The David and Anna Dlugie Kliger Scholarship Fund.

June 7–9, we organized the National Forum for Dialogue Network Activist Conference in Zegrze, near Warsaw. The event gathered over 100 individuals working to preserve the memory of Jews in Poland. Our program included panel discussions, workshop sessions, lectures and meetings. We talked about engaging young people in preserving the memory of Jews, cyber-security, designing walking tours of Jewish sites, publishing research and teaching about the Holocaust after October 7. This year, we also invited book authors to discuss their recent publications; we were honored to host Anna Bikont, Łukasz Krzyżanowski, and Joanna Ostrowska, while Magdalena Kozłowska talked about Emily Tamkin’s “Bad Jews.”

In the workshop sessions, we addressed issues such as popular camp fiction. The absolute highlight of the Conference was the meeting with Hanna Krall, a journalist and writer, one of the first to publish on the experience of Polish Jews during the Holocaust. She shared a lot of great stories in conversation with Network’s own Anna Włodek and Mirek Skrzypczyk. The conference ended with a tour of Nasielsk’s Jewish heritage.

photo: Piotr Banasik i Wojciech Dobrogojski

photo: Piotr Banasik

It’s been a long while since I was among people with such kindness. We’ve created an atmosphere that I would wish to have every day in the place I am active. I’m experiencing an ocean of kindness, support, and empathy. I have a sense of belonging to a community that is free of envy or jealousy, a community where people want to help one another, learn from one another … What happened at this conference is an existential experience.

Katarzyna Dąbrowska from Włocławek

With Assistance from the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany
Supported by the German Federal Ministry of Finance and the Foundation Remembrance, Responsibility and Future

The National Forum for Dialogue Network Conference for activists is cofinanced by Friends of the Forum and individual donors and institutions from Poland and abroad supporting Forum for Dialogue.

Forum for Dialogue, House of the Wannsee Conference and Ecorys team up in a grant from the Citizens, Equality, Rights and Values program of the European Commission.

We are pleased to announce that Forum for Dialogue, together with the House of the Wannsee Conference from Berlin and Ecorys Polska, has received a grant in the 2023 edition of the Citizens, Equality, Rights and Values program set up by the European Commission. Forum is the leader of this international consortium of organizations. For the next two years, our Towards Networks for Dialogue: Multi-perspective Strategies for Combating Antisemitism at Local Levels project, will enable us to connect individuals and institutions combating antisemitism by working directly with local communities in Poland and Germany into networks that provide support and sustainability.

The project implements the methods and strategies for lasting impact and change that we have been developing for the past 25 years. The funding and international partnerships, however, allow us to further strengthen our network of grassroots activists from all over Poland, who educate about Jewish history and culture, preserve Jewish heritage, and establish relations with descendants of Polish Jews. By growing the network substantially in the coming two year period, introducing new organizational tools and broadening our program offer for Network members, we ensure effectiveness and impact of our and Network members’ activities in Poland.

While we grow and support the activists in the Forum for Dialogue Network, the House of the Wannsee Conference will build a network of individuals, institutions, and partners dedicated to Holocaust education, including volunteers and activists, freelancers professionals, as well as permanent staff of sites of remembrance in Berlin and Brandenburg. They also plan to finetune their existing approaches to educating about the Holocaust and combating antisemitism today during a series of meetings and discussions organized by the House for their network members.

An integral element of the project is the exchange of experiences between partners carried on throughout the project. It will also reflect the translatability of perspectives between Polish and German work of remembrance and the possibility of using the strategies and solutions developed by Forum for Dialogue and House of the Wannsee Conference in other contexts. At the same time, Ecorys, with its both local and global expertise, will provide strategic assistance to both partners in order to help them act in more sustainable and effective ways.

Funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the authors only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or European Commission. Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them.

May 10–12 saw the meeting and integration of two groups of members of the Forum for Dialogue Network. Our Polish benefactors travelled to the Lublin Area to meet with our activists, Dorota Bida, Mariusz Czuj, and Emil Majuk, to explore the Jewish history and heritage of Chełm, Wojsławice, and Włodawa. łukasz Mieszkowski, in his role as co-author of the design of the Museum and Memorial in Sobibór, and a longtime Polish Friend of the Forum, took the entire delegation on a tour of the site. It is vital for us to have the members of the Forum for Dialogue Network meet and interact, as well as learn about each other’s motivation for being part of the Forum community.

It is equally important to us that the work of the Network activists is recognized by those who, like them, believe that Jewish history in Poland is Polish history and must be preserved, documented, and widely shared. All participants of the visit expressed great enthusiasm for the program, which only confirms our belief that we need to organize even more opportunities for people dedicated to dialogue to meet and learn from one another.

photo: Wojciech Dobrogojski

It’s great that so many passionate people are connected via the Forum for Dialogue Network. These are tender, thoughtful people who support one another … There is so much goodness being done where so much evil resides. And it lasts thanks to the Network support, and also thanks to the Forum. It’s real grassroots work. The trip leaves me inspired and feeling so much better.

Paulina Kieszkowska

We are pleased to announce that Forum for Dialogue has received a grant in the “Public Diplomacy 2024” program of the Polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The project funded, called “Through a Common History to a Modern Poland: Study Visits of Jewish Leaders to Poland,” involves the organization of two comprehensive study tours to Poland for no less than 16 individuals, representatives of Jewish communities from the US, UK, Australia, Canada, Israel, and other countries.

The purpose of the Study Visit program is introducing the participants to the complexity of Jewish history in Poland, as well as to the efforts to preserve the memory of the Jewish past undertaken in Poland.

Leaders of Jewish communities will participate in a series of meetings with experts, scholars, local activists and young people with whom they will father a comprehensive perspective on Jewish past and present in Poland. They will also visit major Polish cities, such as Warsaw and Krakow, as well as other places, including smaller towns that once had a substantial Jewish presence. This, in turn, will allow the participants to learn about the wide spectrum of endeavors undertaken in Poland to keep the Jewish memory alive and preserve Jewish heritage, as well as the successes in and obstacles to building an open civil society.

Name of the task: Through a joint history to modern Poland. Study visits of leaders of the Jewish Diaspora to Poland.

Project financed from the state budget within the competition of the Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Poland “Public Diplomacy 2024”.

Funding amount: 179 999,98 PLN

Short description of the task: The project involves the organization of two comprehensive study tours to Poland for no less than 16 individuals, representatives of Jewish communities from the US, UK, Australia, Canada, Israel, and other countries. The purpose of these activities is introducing the participants to the complexity of Jewish history in Poland, as well as to the efforts to preserve the memory of the Jewish past undertaken in Poland.