SI/E Seminar: "THERE WAS HOPE IN THEM"

Soroptimist International Club Krakow Galicja
invites to the seminar:

"THERE WAS HOPE IN THEM.
- Women at the time of war and occupation and their difficult choices"

Place and Date: Krakow, Oswiecim (Auschwitz), April 23rd-25th 2010.

Aims: Learn, understand, communicate - save the historic remembrance and truth for future generations.
- Broadening the knowledge and raising awareness of the members of Soroptimist International.
- Building ties in today’s Europe basing on the experience of the war and occupation generation.
- Showing women’s attitudes in the inhumane world.
- Paying tribute to the Holocaust victims.
- Showing collective historical memory as heritage, which should be the source of reflection and the ground for educating young generations.
- Using the dialogue in the spirit of tolerance.

Project Realisation:
The project implies the meeting of women, associated in the European and World Clubs of Soroptimist International, in Krakow; combined with a seminar (study visits, discussion panel, meeting with authors, concert, exhibition).

Our initiative is aimed at women who are interested in learning the truth behind the events of World War II in the area of Poland. Historical truth is manipulated much too often. The witnesses of the past events, including the generation of children who were born during the war, are passing away. Therefore, women who witnessed past events have been invited to the conference to share their memories with us. The historical memory contained in the fates of individual people is very suggestive and it gives us an opportunity to empathize with them and form our own judgment on the problem. We hope that we will be able to communicate and show that the experience of war can help us overcome our contemporary, worldly problems or face various adversities. It will help us believe that people are able to unite against evil.

We want these saved memories to contribute to the development of humanistic attitudes. In the period of moral evil, when many women were victims of inhuman deeds (medical experiments, rapes, murders of the innocent), women also played an important role. For them life was, unquestionably, the most important value. Having saved and given the gift of life, they were becoming the carriers of dignity and guaranteed survival. They could forgive, overcome their hatred, nurse hope.

The seminar participants associated in Soroptimist clubs often try to find for themselves new social challenges and missions. Sharing the knowledge on the experience of women in extreme war conditions, we want to boost their motivation and support their faith in the belief that every activity to help others, in every historical context has a profound meaning.

Seminar Program:

Friday, 23rd April 2010
• Arrival, Accommodating participants
• Visiting Krakow under the banner of Krakow as a meeting place of many cultures
• Opening the seminar in Galicja Museum:
• Speech by the Representative of Galicia Jewish Heritage Institute
• Dignity saved… -Meeting with exceptional women, history witnesses:
- Roma Ligocka – a writer, painter and the author of ”The Girl in the Red Coat”, the prototype of the figure of a girl in the film “Schindler’s List” by Steven Spielberg;
- a woman awarded the title: Righteous among the Nations of the World;
and
- the Survivor
• Dinner
• Late Evening Walk in Kazimierz – the Jewish District of Krakow

Saturday, 24th April 2010
State Museum Auschwitz -Birkenau in Oswiecim:
• Visiting the camp in Auschwitz and the camp in Birkenau
• Women’s camp stories – meeting with a Museum director
• Lunch
Maximilian’s Centre in Harmeze, Franciscan Monastery
• visiting the exhibition: - Labyrinths of Memory, works by Marian Kolodziej, an ex Auschwitz camp prisoner depicting camp life and experience.
• Man in the presence of evil - discussion
Galicja Museum:
• Dinner
• Song koncert by Jaga Wronska, an artist of Loch Camelot

Sunday, 25th April 2010
A Walk in Krakow:
• Podgorze – places connected with Krakow’s ghetto (“The Pharmacy under the Eagle” - a supply and contact spot for the Jews living in the ghetto, Oscar Schindler’s Enamelware Factory)
• Sightseeing
• Lunch
• Free time
• Optional - Temples and Cemeteries of Kazimierz

Seminar costs:
Registration fee - 270,00 euro (program costs: guides, consecutive translation, entrance fees, transport, meals – lunches, dinners)
Accommodation approx. - 80,00 euro per night x 3 nights = 240,00 euro

We would like to ask the ladies interested in the seminar to confirm their participation by 15th January 2010 by sending an e-mail to the following address: klubgalicja@gmail.com