American Jewish Committee To Launch Polish-Jewish Youth DialogueAmerican Jewish Committee The American Jewish Committee is expanding its Next Generation project with the launch in Warsaw this week of a discussion guide for Polish and American Jewish high school students participating in the annual March of the Living. "There is a Poland today that is open and willing to dialogue with Jews," said Deborah Sklar, director of the AJC project who wrote the discussion guide and will be participating in the Next Generation dialogues in Poland. "In order to break down stereotypes, we want to expose the American Jewish youth to modern-day Poland and to join with Poles also committed to understanding the past."  More than 200 American Jewish youth will arrive in Poland on Tuesday and join with young Polish leaders in dialogue over several days about the Holocaust and contemporary Polish society. Two dialogue forums will take place in Warsaw: - Wednesday, April 18, 9 p.m. at the Forum Hotel. Polish participants in the dialogues will include Piotr Cywinski, President, Catholic Intelligentsia Club; Andrzej Folwarczny, Parliamentarian and Chair of the Israeli-Polish group; Piotr Kadlcik, Vice-President, Warsaw Jewish Community; Stanislaw Krajewski, Head of AJC's Office Warsaw; and Karina Sokolowska, leader, Polish Jewish Students Union. The AJC discussion guide, created together with the Polish government, is the latest development in a pilot program initiated by AJC a year ago when Polish high school students joined with New York March of the Living participants in a first-ever joint visit to death-camp sites and dialogue. "Unless we really educate ourselves and talk face-to-face, the old hatreds will continue," said Cheryl Fishbein, board member of the American Jewish Committee and Chair of New York March of the Living. Discussions that took place last year in Poland, and at a preparatory seminar in the U.S. involving New York March of the Living participants and young Polish leaders, form the basis of the discussion guide. Since its founding in 1988, MOL has brought over 30,000 Jewish high school students around the world to Poland on Holocaust Memorial Day to retrace the death-march from Auschwitz to Birkenau.
For more information, or to contact American Jewish Committee, see their website at: www.ajc.org |
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