When Sara Minash, a local teacher, visited Poland in November, where her grandmother and others had been killed in the Holocaust, she didn’t expect the kind of warm welcome she received.
She was, in fact, astonished to see young non-Jewish people learning about a Jewish shtetl, having learned to sing in flawless Hebrew for Jewish guests.
In all, 13 Milwaukee Jewish educators visited Poland and participated in programming with Andrzej Folwarczny. Folwarczny is founder and president of the Forum for Dialogue Among Nations, a non-profit Polish organization devoted to fostering Polish-Jewish dialogue. The visits with Milwaukee Jewish representatives are just one part of his organization’s mission.
“The majority of the work that I do is based in Poland,” he explained in an interview with the Chronicle. His team of educators visit small towns in Poland to talk with students about Jewish history. Polish history classes don’t emphasize the Holocaust, and the Jewish experience in Poland and many Polish children have never met a Jew, he said. Students will often discover the Jewish history of their own towns through the Forum for Dialogue Among Nations, Folwarczny said.
For his work with students, he seeks to broaden young people’s knowledge of the long presence of Jews in Poland through self-exploration and commemoration of their own local pre-war Jewish history. Activities are targeted at Polish middle school and high school students.
Visitors from Milwaukee Jewish Federation met with students, giving Polish students a remarkable experience and creating an “emotional experience for the visitors,” he said. Minash, for example, was touched by non-Jewish Polish children taking care of a Jewish cemetery and when they thoughtfully provided Jewish visitors with a basket of stones – so that they could be placed on headstones, in accordance with Jewish tradition.
“The people that I met that are working for that organization, most of them are non-Jews with non-Jewish roots,” said Minash, who works at Milwaukee Jewish Day School. “I saw there the result of their work, beams of light, of young people who explored and celebrate our past.”
From Nov. 1-9, 13 local Jewish educators went on the trip to Poland, with activities organized by the Forum for Dialogue Among Nations. Airfare was sponsored by donors from the Milwaukee Jewish community. The group represented 11 local organizations, including teachers from every branch of Judaism, supplementary schools, day schools, and community institutions. Milwaukee Jewish Federation’s Coalition for Jewish Learning organized the trip.
The Poland trip included meetings with experts, visits to museums and Auschwitz, and a day in Krzepice, where non-Jewish high school students had learned about the Jewish history of their town and prepared for the visitors. Students there are working to preserve Jewish history.
Folwarczny is driven to teach Jewish history in Poland because history lessons under Communist rule focused on the plight of the Polish people during World War II, not the Holocaust, he said.
Folwarczny sees an unbreakable connection: “I feel that you cannot really understand Polish history without the Jewish contribution.”
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What’s a School of Dialogue?
Polish schools that participate in the Forum for Dialogue Among Nations educational program can be awarded the title, “School of Dialogue.” Students must complete four Forum for Dialogue Among Nations workshops and complete a project commemorating the pre-war Jewish community.
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