Challenges, Obstacles, and New Developments in Coming to Terms with Collective Memory of the Holocaust in Education and Beyond in Post-1989 Poland

Submitted by Karen Murphy

This afternoon we enjoyed a thoughtful and engaging presentation by Dr. Jolanta Ambrosewicz-Jacobs, the Director of the Center for Holocaust Studies at the Jagiellonian University in Kracow, Poland, on Holocaust education within Poland.  Dr. Ambrosewicz-Jacobs talked about education in the informal and formal sectors, including the work of museums, memorial sites, ngos and teachers in schools. For 45 years there was silence about Jewish subjects in schools, the media and in general in Poland. Over the last 25 years, things have changed markedly.

There is interest in Holocaust education and increasingly the summer course that Dr. Ambrosewicz-Jacobs offers is over-subscribed and has been for the past nine years.  Also, teachers regularly take their students to Auschwitz and other museums and memorial sites. However, the actual teaching of the history of the Holocaust in Poland is very uneven.  Teachers are afraid to teach about the dark moments in Poland’s past. They lack confidence and training to do this well, and, they still primarily teach the dominant narrative, which is one of Polish victimization.

There are many challenges in both the informal and formal sectors. Often teachers visit museums and memorial sites looking to the educators there to “teach” the students, while the museum educators are looking to the teachers to have done pre-work prior to the visit.  Also, there is little space for reflection in these spaces. Students are often rushed through exhibitions and most sites lack seminar spaces for debriefing.  Meanwhile students are craving interactivity, reflection and substantive engagement.

In the formal sector, teachers are constrained both by curricular changes, a lack of training and a lack of good resources that address the past in complex ways.  Essentially, the Holocaust is not integrated into the national narrative which is still primarily a war narrative and one of martyrdom of the Polish nation. Teachers are also not necessarily reading the scholarship developed and discussed by academics, and they are far from bringing a moral or ethical dimension into the work of teaching this history. In addition, there is an important generational distinction, Dr. Ambrosewicz-Jacobs believes, as young people are freer about facing the past, more open to it while their teachers remain fearful and conflicted.

Dr. Ambrosewicz-Jacobs pointed to some exceptional programs but also cautioned us about being overly optimistic. Teachers still need more courage, she said, to face Poland’s past, to speak about it and teach it effectively.