ΕΠΑΛ Συκεών – “Krakow Educational Trip: eTwinning project “Holocaust: a Lesson for life.”

The following is a report on the final meeting of the eTwinning project, "The Holocaust, a Lesson for Life!" which we held in Krakow and included a visit to the Auschwitz concentration and extermination camp.

From April 14th to 17th, 2024, six students from Class B' of EPAL Sykeon and their teachers, Mrs Efraimidou Kyriaki, founder of the project,

and Mrs Voulkidou Smaragda, part of the pedagogical team, went on the final trip of their online project to Krakow to meet the Polish and German project members, along with their teachers Lidia Checinska and Jens-Frederic Eckhold. The project was conducted via the digital EU education platform eTwinning and aimed to reflect on the importance of the Holocaust in today's world. The task for the participants from the three European countries was to examine the diaries of three young Jewish people who emerged from persecution during World War II. These were "Anne Frank's Diary", "548 Days with Another Name: Salonika 1943. A Child's Diary, an Adult's Memories of War", and "Renia's Diary: A Young Girl's Life in the Shadow of the Holocaust". The project was inspired by the teachers at a Centropa conference and supported by Centropa e.V. in Hamburg, whose archive material on the Jewish history of the 20th century, along with material from Yad Vashem, was used.

Aside from completing the project, the trip to Krakow included:

Getting to know each other in real life.Exploring the city of Krakow.Particularly its Jewish history.Visiting the Auschwitz I and Auschwitz-Birkenau camps.

The trip was also an opportunity for young people from Piotrków Trybunalski (Poland), Thessaloniki (Greece), and Hamburg (Germany) to meet and participate in joint activities.

While waiting for the partners to arrive, as both groups came late in the evening by train, our team, which arrived early, grabbed the opportunity to visit the famous Vielitzka Saltmines in a two-hour tour through history and art.

It was a complete program for a few days. On Sunday, there was only time for dinner and getting to know each other on-site.

On Monday, the program started successfully with a city tour led by our Polish colleague. The tour included a mix of information and city exploration tasks in groups of people from different countries. Those interactive scavenger hunt activities helped us learn about the old royal metropolis on the Vistula and get to know each other better through collaborative work and communication. Throughout the excursion, the emphasis was on promoting English language skills. The program remained entertaining despite the sudden change in weather from a beautiful spring evening on Sunday to cool and rainy weather on Monday. After lunch, we participated in an organized tour of the old and increasingly current Jewish Krakow as arranged. We visited the Kazimierz district, with its synagogues and Jewish institutions, as well as the area of the ghetto during the German occupation on the other side of the Vistula. In the early evening, we had some free time to explore the city further in small groups, talk to each other, and socialize.

On Tuesday, we set off at 6:15 a.m. with breakfast in the coach, as the weather was cool and windy but increasingly friendlier, and we went to the two camps Auschwitz and Auschwitz-Birkenau, which are about an hour and a half drive from Krakow. The tour started from Auschwitz I labour camp, the concentration camp first set up by Nazi Germany in a barracks complex for the defeated Polish army. The well-preserved facility offers a vivid impression of the reality of camp life there at the time, in which torment, abuse, humiliation and death were a sad, constant everyday occurrence. Of particular note here is the prison with its torture facilities, the execution site, but also the so-called infirmary where Nazi doctors carried out their cruel research on their victims. A visit to the Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination camp followed. The spaciousness of the camp was impressive, and the relics of the suffering of countless people at the time were depressing. The barracks gave a good impression of the reality of life and suffering of the people in the camp, and the well-known images of the ramp where the newly arrived were selected and sent either into exploitation work or directly into the gas chamber became vivid and "real". Even if the suffering of the prisoners, the cruelty of the perpetrators and their obsession with extermination remain incomprehensible after visiting the place, a different, more precise idea of what happened emerges.

After a diverse and often stressful 6-hour tour filled with information and a long walk, the bus back was tranquil, and many group members were asleep. Following a late lunch of Polish specialties such as pierogi, small groups had free time to spend in the hotel or explore the city. That evening, a work phase took place, which, due to the lack of a meeting room in the hotel, was held in a large shared room belonging to the Polish group. This meeting immediately had a charming character, promoting the exchange of experiences between groups of mixed countries. We all worked together on the tasks for the online-supported diary project and reflected upon them. With this work phase, two very intensive and eventful days together, filled with a program, came to a close, and the joint project reached its (essentially) conclusion and climax. After a warm farewell, the groups left for their home countries the next day.

This crowning conclusion to the eTwinning project, with a joint meeting of those involved and an impressive program, was made possible thanks to generous funding for the trip via the "Schools Shape Political Education" action program from the Hamburg State Center for Civic Education. We thank them, along with the TOLI Institute, which financially supported our group visit to Auschwitz-Birkenau, and our long-supportive extracurricular project partner, Centropa e.V.