MacKenzie’s Poland Seminar

This fall I was given the opportunity to meet scholars that work with the organization Classrooms Without Borders. After talking to them about my interest in history and specifically the Holocaust and its impact on the world today, I was offered to join them on their annual trip to Poland. Unfortunately this seminar is costly and although I was awarded a scholarship through CWB, my family and I are unable to pay the expenses in full for the experience. Going to Poland would consist of a week of packed days visiting concentration camps, memorial museums, and meeting survivors of the Holocaust along with learning their stories first hand. This is especially near and dear to my heart because as a child I would spend every Friday up the street celebrating shabbat with my best friend Mira Morris and her family. Growing up exchanging gifts for Hanukkah and attending the Purim festival with her family taught me the loving and welcoming community the Jewish people of Pittsburgh truly are. This being said, the attack on this same kind community on October 27th, 2018 in Squirrel Hill forced me to confront the systemic hatred for people I believed to be family. I watched their sense of security and sacred beliefs be violated on account of a hatred that dates back to the attack on Jews that took place 74 years ago in Europe. This trip will afford me the opportunity to gain first hand perspective into how the violence of the Holocaust was possible on such a grand scale. This insight will allow me to further my education on the historical importance of this event, but aso enlighten me to the ideals that are pervasively integrated into media and society today.