I now hear some politicians, some journalists, some educators who are coming to me
and reacting to what Russia is doing in Ukraine. They want me to refer to WWII and they tell me, “you know I was in Auschwitz five, ten, or fifteen years ago and now, yes, I realize this is the essence of remembrance to understand today’s tasks.” Of course this is happening ten or fifteen years later, but it is because he or she did this rite de passage. It is not a complete change, it is not a change for ever, but there is even a small change that bears some fruits in the future. When it comes to objects, they are symbols. We do not know the name
of the small child who had these shoes, but they are the last thing that remain of them. These symbols give us some “augmented reality,” they express more than what they are really. In the end, it functions. […] Sometimes, the remains of these symbols, this experience of rite de passage, remains decades after the visit. But of course, there are many difficulties. I am not personally a big fan of empathy as a solution. […] Even in the word
of empathy that has been very well linked with identification earlier, there are some big dangers. If I’m empathic because I identified with a victim, the victim being a human person like me, it means that a victim who is different than me is not my problem. Even those issues of identification are a hard task in education. – Dr. Piotr M. A. Cywiński
From the left: dr. Matthew Boswell, dr. Jennifer Rich, dr. Maria Zalewska, photo: Press Office