Thorough inspections of Auschwitz I and Auschwitz II-Birkenau camps, special visit to publicly inaccessible block 10 associated with horrible experiments on women, information on the conservation laboratories of the museum and a meeting with the survivor of the Warsaw uprising and a subsequent prisoner of Auschwitz II – Birkenau, today a poet Bogdan Bartnikowsky – all of that will be remembered by twelve Czech teachers who participated in a special seminar at the State Museum Auschwitz – Birkenau in early March 2014. The seminar took place on the days of the tragic events anniversary – 70 years after the disposal of the so-called Terezin family camp in Auschwitz-Birkenau (1944).
The seminar was exceptional for us in that respect that it was intended not only for Czech but also for Polish teachers, which gave the event another dimension – the dimension of a meeting. The International Centre for Education about Auschwitz and the Holocaust, which organized this seminar, incorporated interesting educational blocks in the programme, thanks to which we learned a little about the historical development of education about the Holocaust in Western and Eastern Europe, and of course, the programme also included presentations of school projects delivered by teachers themselves.
We greatly appreciate the long-term cooperation with the State Museum Auschwitz – Birkenau and we hope that our next joint endeavour will be just as successful as this one.
Kl