I was grateful to be able to travel to Warsaw and Krakow, Poland for fall break this semester with a group of 12 students in Professor Marc Jacob’s course on conducting research in Europe. Our trip was part of the EURO Fellows Program, a new initiative through the Keough School’s Nanovic Institute for European Studies.
Our trip began in Warsaw, Poland’s historically rich capital city. Here, our group was able to visually study a city which is marked by three distinct eras of architecture, with each era being intimately tied to the memory of the Polish people. During a walking tour of Warsaw during our first day in the country, we walked through the Old Town, which, reconstructed in the 1950s, serves as a beautiful replication of a city nearly completely destroyed during the Second World War.
The following day focused on the history of the Jewish people in Poland, and the complicated and painful politics of memory that remain for the very small Jewish community in Poland. We also explored how the people of Warsaw handle a legacy that is geographically and historically inescapable. Our day started at the Jewish Historical Institute, where we heard from museum curators about the preservation of the limited artifacts that remain from the Warsaw Ghetto — the largest Nazi-occupied ghetto in Europe — and their efforts to tell the stories of those persecuted by the Nazis. Our afternoon brought us to the nearby POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews, where we spoke with Senior Education Specialist Katarzyna Jankowska about the museum’s mission: to preserve the history of Polish Jews and to counteract antisemitism, discrimination and exclusion.
By all of my classmates’ accounts, our conversation with Małgorzata Wosińska, a Holocaust and genocide studies researcher, was among the most striking experiences of our trip. She met our group outside the POLIN Museum and gave us a walking tour of the surrounding area, which is situated directly on top of the remains of the Warsaw Ghetto. The land on which we were standing was her area of study: How does a community live with such a legacy right below their feet?
Such close proximity is intentional, Dr. Wosińska explained to us. She spoke against the hiding of history, or the physical distancing of oneself from it. Walking around the grassy park behind the POLIN Museum, she pointed out cleavages in the ground that would sometimes falter in the rainy spring season, leaving holes that would occasionally show the cement remains of the Warsaw Ghetto. Drawing on her background in trauma studies, she explained that this proximity was a “prevention measure.” In a unique manner, she tied the psychological memory very close to physical and tangible geography.
Dr. Wosińska generously invited our entire group to her Warsaw apartment the next evening for dinner and a discussion. Like the POLIN Museum, her apartment was situated directly over the remains of the Warsaw Ghetto. Before we entered, she showed us a preserved site located just a few feet from the apartment complex: a hole, protected under glass, with a recently discovered document from the time of the Warsaw Ghetto. Inside Dr. Wosińska’s apartment, we had an interesting conversation about her work as a trauma studies researcher, as well as the personal significance of the archaeological and geographic history of her home. Along with her husband, an architecture professor in Warsaw, she showed us her most recent physical findings of artifacts from the ghetto that existed just yards from her apartment.
Our time in Warsaw concluded with a meeting with Piotr Rypson of the Poland Ministry of Culture and National Heritage. This hour-long meeting (which could have lasted three times longer!) focused on the ministry’s unique role in preserving and presenting the history of Poland. We dove deep into the complicated process of retrieving stolen art from the war and the politics surrounding money, influence and governing boards for cultural institutions.
On the first day following our arrival in Krakow, our group visited Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum. In what was the first time visiting this site for most of the group, it represented a solemn experience as we received a guided tour of Nazi Germany’s largest concentration camps. Following our time there, we met with an educator at the Auschwitz Jewish Center Foundation to discuss the historical legacy of the Holocaust in the nearby town of 34,000.
Although I feel as if I only scratched the surface of a very intellectually and emotionally rich experience, I hope I have effectively shared a piece of how students in the EURO Fellows Program and Professor Jacob’s course were able to better understand the close relationship between memory and current politics in Poland.
I am grateful to Roy Kimmey and Morgan Munsen at the Nanovic Institute for planning and carrying out the one-week immersion experience. I would be remiss not to mention two additional groups; we received a tremendous tour and hospitality from State Archives in Warsaw, and several Notre Dame alumni generously joined us for dinner during the trip. I’m grateful to the Nanovic Institute for this opportunity and to the Keough School for letting me share this with you!
Originally published by at keough.nd.edu on December 12, 2024.