Liberal Arts students travel to Poland to learn about the Holocaust

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — More than 100 Penn State students spent their spring breaks traveling the globe through seven College of the Liberal Arts embedded programs, which are Penn State courses taken on campus or online that include a short-term international travel component. The students saw the classroom come to life by visiting historical and cultural sites and interacting with local people.

Students taking HIST/JST 426 had the opportunity to travel to Poland for seven days as part of "The Holocaust and History" embedded program in the College of the Liberal Arts. The course seeks to deepen students' understanding of key issues surrounding the Holocaust and pre-war Jewish life through visiting historical sites in Poland.

“Having spent a semester abroad previously, I understood the value of experiences abroad,” said Nathan Russek, a fourth-year student majoring in international politics and psychology from Maple Glen, Pennsylvania. “Thus, when I noted the opportunity to spend a week studying about the subjects I was learning, in the locations they actually occurred, I did not want to pass the opportunity up. Experiential learning is often the most impactful form of learning, and I am grateful to have been afforded the opportunity to devote my final spring break at Penn State to such an important subject of study.”

Students on the trip began in the capital city of Warsaw, Poland, where they visited museums, the Warsaw Jewish Cemetery, and the area of the former Warsaw Ghetto. 

The group then traveled southeast to Lublin, the Borderlands and the sites of the Majdanek and Belzec concentration camps, which was meaningful to individuals on the trip, they said.

“The location that stood out most to me was the Majdanek concentration camp,” said Kristin Newvine, a 2020 history graduate who went on the trip as a co-leader. “It was the first primary Holocaust site that I had ever been to, and the site was sobering to say the least. To visit the site of such death and destruction gives one a deeper appreciation for life.”

Casey Sennett, a fifth-year integrated undergraduate-graduate student pursuing a master’s degree in anthropology and bachelor’s degrees in anthropology, history, Jewish studies and Middle East studies, said her time at the Grodzka Gate – NN Theater in Lublin deeply moved her. The organization is dedicated to preserving the memory of Lublin’s Jewish community prior to and during the Holocaust. The exhibit included multimedia approaches to displaying the history of Lublin’s Jewish community, including audio-recorded testimonies, photographs, biographies, maps and models.

“The exhibit painted a detailed picture of what the Jewish community in Lublin was like, where it was located and who the members of the community were,” said Sennett, a Paterno Fellow and Schreyer Scholar.

Students then finished their trip in the historic city of Krakow, where they toured the Remuh Synagogue and visited the site of Oskar Schindler’s factory and the Płaszów Concentration Camp.

While on the trip, students enrolled in HIST/JST 426 used these travel experiences to deepen their understanding of the content learned in the course.

“We have covered so many different ideas and topics that while I was in Poland seeing these sites, I was able to relate it back to a topic we learned about,” said Madison Aulisio, a second-year student majoring in international politics from Scranton, Pennsylvania. “I think that was really helpful as this was a difficult trip and having no knowledge beforehand would have made this trip even harder.”

Even alumni, who have studied the Holocaust for numerous years, said this trip was incredibly eye-opening.

“I have been studying the Holocaust since 2018, and this was my first time seeing primary Holocaust sites,” Newvine said. “It absolutely solidified for me the necessity of this work, and how advocacy and remembrance is still left to solicit.”

Many of these students were able to participate in the trip thanks to Liberal Arts enrichment funding — money awarded to Liberal Arts students through the Career Enrichment Network to help cover the costs of out-of-classroom experiences, such as education abroad, internships and research.

“If not for the Liberal Arts enrichment funding, it is unlikely that I would have been able to partake in this life changing experience to begin with,” Russek said. “The enrichment funds helped facilitate my travels and have aided in underscoring the strong foundation my degrees have laid in support of my inevitable desired career in human rights law. The funds in a sense can be considered an investment in my desires to create a better world, and I look forward to pursuing this aspiration for the remainder of my life.”

Liberal Arts Career Enrichment Network

The Career Enrichment Network empowers Liberal Arts students to explore, engage and define their career journey through diverse career development opportunities. Students can meet with a career coach to explore careers, internships, education abroad, research, the Liberal Arts Alumni Mentor Program and more. Through donor support, the Career Enrichment Network is able to provide Liberal Arts students with funding to support many of these experiences.