NEW YORK, United States โ Fourteen middle and high school educators and Holocaust education professionals from five U.S. states have been selected by the Jewish Foundation for the Righteous for an intensive study program in Poland that brings participants to many of the places where Jewish communities were destroyed during the Holocaust.
The JFR’s 2026 European Study Program combines academic instruction with visits to concentration and extermination camps, former ghettos, mass graves, memorials and sites of Jewish life.
Historian Robert Jan van Pelt, an internationally recognized Holocaust scholar and authority on Auschwitz, served as the accompanying scholar for the program.
The participating educators, known as Lerner Fellows, come from Alabama, Florida, Illinois, New Jersey and South Carolina. They represent public and private schools, school districts and Holocaust education organizations.
The program is intended to provide educators with a deeper understanding of both the Holocaust and the Jewish communities that existed in Poland before their destruction.
From Warsaw’s Jewish History to the Sites of Destruction
The program began in Warsaw, once home to one of the world’s largest Jewish communities.
Participants toured the Jewish Historical Institute and the POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews. They also walked through the area of the former Warsaw Ghetto and visited Mila 18, the site associated with the headquarters of Jewish resistance fighters during the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.
The educators visited the Umschlagplatz, from which hundreds of thousands of Jews were deported to the Treblinka extermination camp.
Other Warsaw stops included the Monument to the Ghetto Heroes, commonly known as the Rapoport Monument, as well as memorials dedicated to ลปegota and Jan Karski.
The group also visited Jewish and Catholic cemeteries, including the grave of Irena Sendler, the Polish social worker who helped rescue Jewish children from the Warsaw Ghetto.
Participants met with Polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs Secretary of State Wลadysลaw Teofil Bartoszewski and attended a luncheon with representatives of the Polish Society of the Righteous, including Chairman Emeritus Anna Bando and President Andrzej Mikolaklpw, according to information provided by the JFR.
Following the Path of Jewish Communities
The educators traveled to Tykocin, a town that retains physical traces of its prewar Jewish community.
From there, the group visited the nearby ลopuchowo Forest, where members of Tykocin’s Jewish community were murdered and buried in mass graves.
The program continued to Treblinka, one of the principal Nazi extermination camps established in occupied Poland.
Participants also visited Cheลmno nad Nerem, the site of the Kulmhof extermination camp, and Rzuchรณw Forest.
In ลรณdลบ, the educators toured sites including the Radegast Station Museum, the Marek Edelman Dialogue Center and Survivors’ Park.
The itinerary also brought the group to Auschwitz I and Auschwitz II-Birkenau, the largest Nazi concentration and extermination camp complex.
Additional stops included Harmฤลผe, where the group encountered former Auschwitz prisoner Marian Koลodziej’s “Labyrinth” exhibition, and Budy, associated with the killing of female Jewish prisoners.
The educators also visited Krakรณw, including the historic Jewish district of Kazimierz, the Galicia Jewish Museum and Podgรณrze, where the Nazis established the Krakรณw Ghetto.
Turning Historical Sites Into Classroom Understanding
JFR Executive Vice President Stanlee Stahl said the physical experience of visiting Holocaust sites can give teachers a depth of understanding that is difficult to obtain through books and classroom materials alone.
“As 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,” Stahl said.
“By visiting the places where these complex events occurred, educators are better able to connect to what they are teaching, making them more effective teachers.”
Stahl said the program is designed to translate that experience into stronger Holocaust education after participants return home.
“The program is designed to help educators learn the Holocaust experientially so they can present it in a more meaningful and insightful way to their students and colleagues when they return to their schools,” she said.
The program comes as educators face the continuing challenge of teaching the Holocaust to generations increasingly removed from living witnesses and survivors.
Educators From Five States Participate
The 2026 Lerner Fellows are Angie Thompson of Alma Bryant High School in Irvington, Alabama; Maureen Carter, a veteran high school educator from Sanford, Florida; Mary Ellen Richichi of Independence Middle School in Jupiter, Florida; Krystal Lamb of Dr. Joaquin Garcia High School in Lake Worth, Florida; and Charles Hagy Jr. of The Benjamin School in North Palm Beach, Florida.
Florida participants also include Kelly Warsaw of inSIGHT Through Education in Palm Beach Gardens; Julie Gates of Logger’s Run Middle School in Boca Raton; Sheri Crowley of Polo Park Middle School in Wellington; Bradd Weinberg and Micaela McNiff of the School District of Palm Beach County in West Palm Beach; and Charles Dickens of The Florida Holocaust Museum in St. Petersburg.
The remaining fellows are Julie Klein of Fenwick High School in Oak Park, Illinois; Nicole Kepner of Branchburg Central Middle School in Branchburg, New Jersey; and Stacy Steele of York Comprehensive High School in York, South Carolina.
Remembering Those Who Rescued Jews
Holocaust education is one component of the Jewish Foundation for the Righteous’ broader mission.
The organization provides financial assistance to aged and needy non-Jews who risked their lives to rescue Jews during the Holocaust. According to the JFR, it currently assists rescuers living in 10 countries and has provided more than $46.5 million to aged and needy rescuers since the organization was founded.
Its educational programs also use the experiences of the Righteous as examples of individual moral responsibility during the Holocaust.
For the educators traveling through Poland, the study program connects those individual stories with the broader history of Jewish life, persecution, resistance, rescue and mass murder.
The objective, according to the foundation, is ultimately to bring that understanding home, equipping teachers to give future generations a more historically grounded understanding of the Holocaust and the choices made by individuals who confronted Nazi persecution.
