Witnessing Auschwitz

---

Prof. Bożena Karwowska

Email: bozena@mail.ubc.ca

---

Application Deadline: currently still accepting applications for the 2020 program
Start an Application
Continue an Application

Please use Firefox as the browser to properly open the application.

---

About the program

Auschwitz was a place in which several frequently conflicting agendas of the Nazi Germany intersected: it was an industrial compound, a concentration camp, a medical research site, and an extermination facility; it served to imprison, terrorize, enslave, and kill. Moreover, Auschwitz is a site of conflicted memories that raises the question how, and if at all, it can be remembered and commemorated in ways that resist both sentimentalization and the recourse to conventional literary or cinematographic imagery. In fact, one of the most pressing issues of the Holocaust studies is the question: how to educate about Nazi crimes when there are no more survivors to share their stories.

This program takes a multi-disciplinary approach and will give you the chance to take part in lectures, seminars and workshops in Poland, where you will have direct access to historical archives, museums, and leading experts in all relevant disciplines related to the Holocaust studies.You will conduct independent studies at sites of mass extermination, as well as research issues related to the Holocaust in the context of social responsibilities of researchers and professionals.

---

This course is offered by UBC’s Department of Central, Eastern and Northern European Studies (CENES) in partnership and/or cooperation with:

Vancouver Holocaust Educational Center
Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum
University of Warsaw
Jewish Historical Institute
Polish Consulate in Vancouver

---

CENS 303D can count toward the IR Seminar (4th year requirement that satisfies the Arts Research Requirement). The other CENS 303A course can count toward IR List A.

---

General schedule

Please be aware that this is a tentative list. Students will receive a confirmed schedule by the beginning of Term 2, prior to the program start date.
Warsaw

Introduction to the history of Jews in Poland and Eastern Europe, Warsaw Ghetto, and Warsaw Ghetto Uprising
Auschwitz

Lectures, workshops, guided tours, individual and group research activities
Krakow

Krakow Jewish Quarter and Schindler Factory guided tours, lectures, research activities

Lectures and workshops, tours of local shtetls; workshops in Tykocin, Jedwabne, and Sejny; workshops in the center of visual documentation of the Holocaust in Michalowo
Warsaw

Lectures and studies in the Jewish Historical Institute and the Museum of Polish Jews

---

Email go.global@ubc.ca to RSVP
Both information sessions will contain the same information. Attendance at both is not necessary.

---

Contact a Global Seminars Advisor

Email: go.global@ubc.ca

International House
1783 West Mall
Vancouver, BC Canada V6T 1Z2
Global seminars refund and withdrawal policy
Refund on deposits

Students are eligible for a refund of the deposit minus the admin fee ($391.50) if they withdraw from the program within 30 days of paying their deposit – this gives us time to fill any vacated spots so the costs to other students don’t increase. The initial deposit will be non-refundable after 30 days of paying it, except under extraordinary circumstances, considered at the discretion of Go Global.
Refund on program fees

If you withdraw from a Global Seminar program after you have already paid the remaining program fees, you will not be eligible for any refund of program fees or your deposit. Any exceptions to this are at the discretion of Go Global.

If you decide to withdraw your application, you need to make this request in writing by email to the Global Seminar program advisor at go.global@ubc.ca.