From January 22 to 26, as every year for 23 years, we hosted young people from the school in
Kerpen, Germany. The concept of this project was created several years after Oświęcim and Kerpen signed a partnership cooperation agreement.
A group of 22 people from the school in Kerpen came to Oświęcim to visit the Auschwitz-Birkenau
Memorial Site to confront the Nazi policy of extermination. The plan of the stay also included a visit to the city of Oświęcim, along with the Synagogue and the Jewish Center, and a visit to Harmęże to see the exhibition “Photographic Plates of Memory: Labirynths” by former Auschwitz prisoner Marian Kołodziej.


The group also went to Krakow on a trip following the footsteps of the Jewish community that lived in the city before and during World War II. A very important point of the program for the group from Kerpen was a meeting with a former Auschwitz prisoner, Mrs. Zdzisława Włodarczyk, who shared her camp experiences with them.
The aim of the project is, on the one hand, to become acquainted with historical facts, and, on the
other hand, to become emotionally involved in the topics discussed and to be able to express
sadness and other emotions that confronting the difficult past arouses in the youth from Kerpen.