{"id":19382,"date":"2026-07-30T17:02:07","date_gmt":"2026-07-30T17:02:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/poland\/19382\/"},"modified":"2026-07-30T17:02:07","modified_gmt":"2026-07-30T17:02:07","slug":"fenwick-teacher-brings-home-holocaust-lessons-from-poland-trip","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/poland\/19382\/","title":{"rendered":"Fenwick teacher brings home Holocaust lessons from Poland trip"},"content":{"rendered":"

While standing in the middle of a gas chamber in the Auschwitz concentration camp in Poland, Julie Mewhort Klein knew it was a moment that she would share with her classroom.<\/p>\n

As an educator, it is her responsibility to make sure history is not forgotten, she said, and she\u2019s looking forward to being able to bring that firsthand experience back to her students in Oak Park.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was really an indescribably powerful opportunity that was even greater than I could have imagined that it would be,\u201d Klein said.<\/p>\n

Through the Alfred Lerner Fellowship program, Klein was selected among 13 other teachers from five states to participate in a Jewish Foundation for the Righteous 2026 European study program in Poland to learn more about the Holocaust.<\/p>\n

Klein, a teacher at Fenwick High School in Oak Park, spent over a week visiting sites in Poland with other educators to better understand the history of the Holocaust. Klein said she visited mass grave sites, toured the Jewish Historical Institute and met with survivors of the Holocaust.<\/p>\n

\u201cTraveling to Poland and standing in these places was an incredibly powerful experience personally, but also in terms of my professional practice for what I can bring back to my students,\u201d Klein said.<\/p>\n

Klein said she\u2019s studied about the Holocaust since she was young, but nothing compares to actually being at real historic locations. Having the ability to teach her students more confidently than before was one of the benefits she gained from taking the trip as a social studies teacher, she said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe fact that I can describe to students what it is like to walk through a concentration camp, is something that I couldn\u2019t do before,\u201d Klein said. \u201cI think that it\u2019s really important in Holocaust education, too, that we are responsible in how we teach this, this is incredibly difficult content.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"EducatorsEducators and representatives of the Jewish Foundation for the Righteous Gather for a photo during a trip to Poland for a European Holocaust education program this summer. (Julie Mewhort Klein)<\/p>\n

In an era when disinformation is widespread, Klein said, the truth could become distorted. It is her responsibility to remove the doubt from her students about the truth and the history, she said.<\/p>\n

Last year, Klein said she completed a seminar that looked the impact of artificial intelligence in teaching the Holocaust, which touched on artificially created images of the Holocaust accompanying a true testimony from a survivor, which makes it hard to depict what\u2019s a true and a fake image.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs we continue to move further away from the Holocaust, it is more important to empower our educators to better teach their students about the Holocaust,\u201d said Stanlee Stahl, executive vice president of the Jewish Foundation for the Righteous, in a statement. \u201cBy visiting the places where these complex events occurred, educators are better able to connect to what they are teaching, making them more effective teachers.\u201d<\/p>\n

Klein said she understands that no one could understand what the Holocaust was like unless they were survivors, but rather than focusing her lessons on the grotesque killing of the estimated six million people who died in the Holocaust, she said she wants to try to get her students to feel the experience and understand the humanity behind the mass deaths, though nothing will be like being at the actual locations.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s tremendous power for a teacher to be able to say that they have physically experienced a historical site,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

\"JulieJulie Mewhort Klein, a teacher at Fenwick High School in Oak Park, pays respects at the \u0141opuchowo Forest in Poland during a trip with fellow educators to visit sites associated with the Holocaust. (Julie Mewhort Klein)<\/p>\n

As the school year kicks off, Klein said she feels more prepared to answer questions about the historical genocide.<\/p>\n

\u201cI need to be able to respond to a student who says, \u2018Mrs. Klein, how do you know that that\u2019s what it looked like. How do you know that there were gas chambers,\u2019\u201d Klein said. \u201cAnd then I can say, I know because I stood in the gas chamber at Auschwitz. I was there.\u201d<\/p>\n

chardy@chicagotribune.com<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"While standing in the middle of a gas chamber in the Auschwitz concentration camp in Poland, Julie Mewhort…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":19383,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[12287,12288,12289,12290,264,12291,12292,12293,12294,221,6663,12295,12296,1074,101,12297,9,12298,12299],"class_list":["post-19382","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-poland","tag-clarendon-hills","tag-cook-county","tag-darien","tag-dupage-county","tag-education","tag-elmhurst","tag-elmwood-park","tag-franklin-park","tag-hinsdale","tag-history","tag-illinois","tag-la-grange","tag-la-grange-park","tag-local-news","tag-news","tag-oak-park","tag-poland","tag-river-forest","tag-western-springs"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/poland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19382","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/poland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/poland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/poland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/poland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19382"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/poland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19382\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/poland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19383"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/poland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19382"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/poland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19382"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/poland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19382"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}