(first part of the event, January-February 2026)
At the turn of January and February of this year, the Terezín Memorial hosted the first part of an ongoing joint seminar for teachers from the two countries. This cooperative program with the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum brought together 12 Polish and 10 Czech teachers.
The aim of the Czech-Polish seminar is not only to deepen knowledge of the Holocaust, to promote the fight against intolerance and indifference in society, and to explore approaches to teaching this topic, but also to encourage cooperation between teachers from both countries and their schools.
The seminar’s rich program began with participants introducing their respective regions. In the following days, the schedule continued with tours, lectures, and workshops. While the Polish participants were given introductory tours of the former Terezín Ghetto and the Police Prison Terezín, Czech teachers took part in follow-up excursions to sites not normally accessible to visitors. In addition, a workshop entitled Being a Schoolchild in the Protectorate was prepared specifically for the Czech schoolteachers.
The joint program included a lecture by Tomáš Fedorovič of the Terezín Memorial entitled Administration and Documents of the Terezín Ghetto Administration, which, among other things, presented the possibilities of working with digitized databases of people persecuted by the Nazis. All participants attended the workshops Why did Rossel say that…? and In the Footsteps of Memory, and visited the depository of the Terezín Memorial’s Department of Collections. One segment of the seminar was also devoted to presentations of school projects by the Czech participants.
The second section of the Czech-Polish teacher training seminar will take place in the first half of September in Poland. Participants can look ahead to a program prepared by the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum in Oświęcim.
Jan Kaňa
