A Tale of Two Uprisings: Warsaw, Kraków, and Gdańsk, 2019
Travel Dates: May 20, 2019 - May 29, 2019
In connection with the spring course "Between Nazism and Communism" (01:563:270/510:263/01:360:292) Professor Nancy Sinkoff (Jewish Studies/History) led students on a week-long global field experience, "A Tale of Two Uprisings," to Poland. Building on the literary and historical themes of the course, high-achieving students visited three cities, Warsaw, Kraków, and Gdańsk, with day trips to Nowa Huta (The New Steel Mill), east of Kraków, and to Auschwitz-Birkenau, the site of the Nazi concentration and death camps.
In Warsaw, students explored the numerous sites commemorating the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising (1943), the Warsaw Uprising (1944), and visited Polin: The Museum of the Jews of Poland as well as met with veterans of the Warsaw Uprising. A highlight was a class with students from the University of Warsaw in which the Israeli graphic novelist Rutu Modan’s book, “The Property,” was examined. The UW students joined with RU students to travel to Gdańsk to visit the EU museum of Solidarity, built on the former site of the Lenin shipyards. In Kraków, students toured the oldest covered European medieval market, the royal castle, explored the architectural heritage of Poland's Jewish community, as well as visited the site of the Kraków ghetto in Podgórze on the other side of the Vistula river.
Many delicious meals were consumed and conversations shared. Everyone agreed that the region’s history is “bardzo komplikowana.”
The group in front of Polin: Museum of the History of Polish Jews.
