poster saying “Europe is for the whites”. Everything starts with words and young people are not aware of the fact that genocide does start with words as well.” For Dr. Bartuś, one of the solutions resides in making young people more sensitive: “it is not about crying over the victims, it is about knowing and it is about acting.” Everything begins with personal actions that everyone undertakes. She concluded by saying passionately, “This is the question I’d like to ask young people and I’d like them to ask this question to themselves: What are they doing personally in the face of evil? Do they get involved in campaigns? Do they help others? And how do they react to evil around them? For example, when their friends are harassed or bullied at school? This is why we teach them about genocide and the Holocaust. We teach them because we know that this is where everything starts! Everything starts with the evil that happens 10 centimeters away from us. It doesn’t start with something happening in a far-flung location, it is something that starts right here at home, it starts with us! And this is my response to Lemkin. Everyone, everyone can become Rafał Lemkin if they do something right where they are, in their closest vicinity.”
The last member of this panel was Dr. Joanna Podolska, who represented the Marek Edelman Dialogue Center in Łódź. This institution was set up in 2010 by the municipality. It is located in the Park of Survivors, at the border of the former Łódź ghetto through which 200,000 Jews passed during its five years of operation. In its vicinity the former Roma camp was also located (where more than 5,000 Roma and Sinti were kept) the former concentration camp for Polish children and Radegast station, a site from where prisoners were deported to Chełmno-on-Ner and then to Auschwitz.
Their educational activity deals with the story of the Łódź ghetto, the Jews from Łódź and totalitarianism. The dialogue center is not only dedicated to history about the Holocaust or the Jews, however, but also to multiculturalism. The Center discusses the struggle with xenophobia, intolerance and racism. It proposes lectures, workshops, meetings and projects for primary schools, secondary schools and adults, both from Poland and abroad. Amongst their activities, we can also count exhibitions, commemoration events and publications.
To support their educational activities, they rely on the various elements present in the Park of Survivors: