11th European Workshop

From August 11-16, 2020 at the Centre for Dialogue and Prayer in Oświęcim for the eleventh time the European workshop "On Dealing with the Past of Auschwitz Burdened by Violence" organized by the Maximillian Kolbe Foundation from Germany was held. The Foundation was established 13 years ago by the Episcopates of Germany and Poland. In the preamble to the founding act, one of its objectives highlights reconciliation efforts based on the power of memory.

This year, due to the Pandemic, only 13 people took part in the workshop: Germans, Poles, French, Russian living in Germany, and a Croatian studying in Rome. Unfortunately, the invited guests from Ukraine, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Russia and the Balkan countries: Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Slovenia could not come.
For the eleventh time the Archbishop of Bamberg, Prof. Dr. Ludwig Schick, chairman of the Council of the Maximillian Kolbe Foundation was with us.

We are glad that despite some limitations and difficulties related to COVID 19, we managed to organize this workshop and implement a very intensive programme, in Oświęcim, in cooperation with the Centre for Dialogue and Prayer.

A few impressions from the programme:

A visit to the former Auschwitz-Stammlager camp

Online meeting with witnesses

Marian Turski, historian of Jewish origin, journalist; chairman of the Council of the Polin Museum of the History of Polish Jews in Warsaw.

Krystyna Budnicka, of Jewish origin, member of the Association of Children of the Holocaust in Warsaw

Lecture by Archbishop Ludwik Schick “Memory, Truth and Temptation. How the Church is Dealing with the Past" referring to the statement of the German Bishops’ Conference “The German Bishops in the World War”. The text of the statement can be found here.

Small group chats

Conversations during meals

Participation in the solemn Mass in the church St. Maximilian in Oświęcim on the anniversary of the death of St. Maximilian Kolbe with a sermon by Archbishop Schick.

Meditation on the Way of the Cross in Birkenau. The text can be found here.

Photos by Paweł Kęska