Poland's Memory & Renewal: Learning from a Totalitarian Past

Day 1: Travel and Settling in

Our journey to Poland began with a 9:45 PM departure from Logan International Airport in Boston, starting an overnight trip across the Atlantic. After a smooth flight, we landed for a brief layover in Munich before continuing on to Kraków. Once we arrived and checked into our hotel, we took some time to freshen up after the long travel day before heading out to explore. Our first stop was a local Polish grocery store, where we browsed the aisles looking for interesting snacks and getting our first glimpse of everyday life in Poland. After that, we spent some time walking around the city and appreciating the welcoming atmosphere and strong sense of culture that filled the streets and public spaces. For dinner we found a cozy restaurant and enjoyed a traditional meal featuring several kinds of pierogi along with a crispy plate of schnitzel, which made for a delicious introduction to Polish cuisine. To end the evening, we took a relaxing boat tour along the river, where we admired the beautiful riverside scenery and glowing architecture as the city lit up at night. It was the perfect way to finish our first day, and it reminded us how lucky we are to have the opportunity to travel, experience new cultures, and share moments like this together. (Written by Avery and Norah)

Day 2: History of Kraków

The day starts off with a traditional Polish breakfast filled with new food that  was extremely tasty. After breakfast, we began to travel about 10 minutes from the hotel to meet our tour guide to start a three hour walking tour around the old city of Kraków. The tour guide named bartech was knowledgeable and easy to follow either through walking through the town or understanding the history of this amazing city. Well, on the tour, we discovered a tradition of every hour, the bells ringing, and a man playing a trumpet. The tradition started as a watchtower for fires, and then became something more of a man who created a song on a trumpet got shot in the throat with an arrow and died five minutes into the song. After this, the group did some shopping and continued on to a cooking class where the group learned how to make pierogies. They were delicious fun and easy to make. Mrs. Bozzi then brought the group to get ice cream before heading back to the hotel to do a nightly group talk and journals. The day was filled with new knowledge, exciting sceneries to see and amazing food. (Written by Maddie, Lola, and Ellie)

Day 3: History of Kazimierz and Schindler's Factory

On day four we learned about Jewish life in Krakow before and during the Holocaust. We started the day with a visit to Kazimierz Jewish quarter (after taking the tram for fun). Here we toured synagogue, a Jewish cemetery, and the original ghetto. Our guide, Aga, explained how Jewish and Polish communities lived together. After a quick lunch break, we made our way to the Oskar Schindler Factory Museum, which showed how life in the city was changed during the Nazi occupation and told the stories of the people who lived through it. Finally, after dinner we went back to the Square where we went on an Old Town ghost tour (thank you tour guide Adam!) and learned the fun medieval stories of ancient myths/dragons! (Written by Kaya and Abby)

Day 4: Auschwitz-Birkenau

Below, we have added a few images of things we saw today with student reflections as the captions.

This evening we dove into more Polish culture. For dinner we took a double decker bus with a large chicken on its side into a near by town where we feasted on some authentic Polish soup, schnitzel and potato wedges, and apple strudel with vanilla ice cream. In addition to our delectable meal, we were entertained by some traditional Polish folk musicians, who danced around the dining room. Many of our own students had the pleasure of joining them in festivities such as, Polish singing, games, and the chicken dance. As we neared the end of our night, we once again boarded the double decker chicken bus and rode it back to our tram stop. We pleaded to our leaders to let us ride the tram to our glorious Hotel Yarden. While waiting for our tram, our group had fun taking photos to remember our night out. After arriving at our hotel, we closed the night by having our daily debrief in the hotel common area, giving us time to reflect on both the highs and lows of the day. (Written by Estelle Jennings and Asa Gilman)

Day 5: Poland under Communism

Today we visited the salt mines and explored the site that brought prosperity to the country for many centuries. We slowly traveled down many stairs passing monuments as well as real time movie scenes of the creation of the mines. When we reached around 110m down we visited a huge underground cathedral that shocked us all with beauty. Following the cathedral we proceeded to walk further down walking through gigantic chambers. After reaching about 140m below ground, we formed groups of 8 all fitting in an elevator no larger than 10 square feet. After the most turbulence-filled ride, we arrived to the surface. We proceeded to walk to our next tour of the once communist city. We were met by a strange man in a jumpsuit who seemed like a panhandler.  He began offering us fur, a telephone, a baby doll, and much more for a cheap price. With all of us in shock we looked at our project leaders nervous. When we looked over we saw them all recording us and laughing realizing that this crazy guy in a jumpsuit was our tour guide. We proceeded to get into the classic soviet cars. We drove around and eventually arrived at the steel factory. The factory was authentic as everything in there has not been changed since it closed. Today we learned both about the site that brought prosperity to Poland as well as the modern communist city of Poland. (Written by Ben and Gabe)