The Patria Nostra Association is implementing the project “Who was the executioner and who was the victim?”, financed by NIW CRSO under the NEW FIO program.
The partner of the Patria Nostra Association in implementing the above-mentioned project is the Jewish-American university Touro University Berlin, which runs the “Holocaust Studies” course on its Berlin campus (previously German-language, and currently English-language master’s program “Holocaust Communication and Tolerance”), headed by prof. Stephan Lehnstaedt, researcher of German crimes against Jews and the Polish Nation. It is a source of personnel for German and European museums and memorial sites.
Its graduates – gaining in-depth knowledge about the German genocide – most often work professionally in public education in German and international memorial institutions and museums, work as exhibition curators, create documentaries and television programs, develop internet applications, audio guides, etc.
Lecturers at Touro University Berlin are aware that, on the one hand, the Holocaust is used as a political argument, and on the other, it serves as evidence of historical awareness, a historical and educational offer, or a strictly tourist offer. Therefore, cooperation with Touro University is an ideal opportunity to present the Polish historical perspective and “encode” in the minds of experts in the field of Holocaust communication why, among others, the materials often appearing in the media attributing to Poles co-responsibility for the crimes of the Holocaust and World War II in general.
There are approximately 20,000 students on the entire campus of Touro University in Berlin. students. About 20 people study the field of “Holocaust Communication and Tolerance” every year. Not only from Germany, but practically from all over the world – from the USA, Israel, Sweden and Turkey. Just such a group comes to Warsaw as part of this project (15 master’s students and 3 lecturers).
Another partner of the project is the Polish Association of Former Prisoners of Concentration and Extermination Camps with its president, Stanisław Zalewski – a former prisoner of German extermination camps (KL Auschwitz and the Mauthausen system camps – Gusen I and Gusen II. As part of the project, we have planned a meeting of TUB students and lecturers with Mr. Stanisław as a “witness to history” at the Union’s headquarters. This is important because there are a lot of war memorabilia, documents, photos, etc. there.
PZBWPHWiOK was entered into the Register of Associations for the capital city of Warsaw on May 31, 1946. It is an association of former prisoners of German Nazi concentration camps, prisons and other places of forced isolation in the years 1939-1945. Currently, it has over 2,000 members. members associated in district branches, independent regional circles and environmental circles throughout Poland. However, from year to year there are fewer and fewer of them. This is one of the reasons why it is so important to cultivate memory and enable a meeting with someone who felt the war and German terror personally. Therefore, it will best answer the seemingly rhetorical question “who was the executioner and who was the victim?”
