Monday, October 21, 2013

Summer Program in Poland Update

On September 18, student participants in the Daemen College Summer Program in Poland delivered a presentation at the monthly meeting of the Polish Arts Club of Buffalo. Students presented the findings of their research project dealing with "World War II and Public Memory in Poland." Funded by the Daemen College Think Tank, students conducted research while in Poland in July 2013.


Left to right: Caitlyn Ebert, Chelsea Sieczkarek, Dr. Andrew Wise, Charles Peszynski (President of the Polish Arts Club of Buffalo), Kaleigh Ratliff, and Elizabeth White.

Students also discussed their role in the preservation of the Jewish cemetery in Przemysl, Poland. Students were guided by Dr. John Hartman, who founded Remembrance and Reconciliation, Inc. in 1998 as a way to restore and maintain the cemetery. Dr. Hartman is now working with Daemen students to develop an online archive of images and records related to the cemetery.


Dr. John Hartman (fourth from left) with students outside the Jewish cemetery in Przemysl.


Dr. Hartman will visit Daemen College on November 22-23 in order to meet with Daemen students and faculty, as well as our friends in the community who are interested in the ongoing efforts to preserve Jewish cultural heritage in Poland.

We will also be joined by Dr. Tomasz Pudlocki, a native of Przemysl and an historian at Jagiellonian University in Krakow, Poland. Dr. Pudlocki is a lecturer in the Daemen Summer Program in Poland, and he will deliver a presentation on Saturday, November 23 at 7:30 in Wick Alumni Lounge. The lecture is free and open to the public, and will deal with the theme of the Daemen Summer Program in Poland for  2014: "Galicia: One Land, Three Nations. History and Memory." Next summer, the curriculum and site visits will focus on the shared history of Poles, Jews, and Ukrainians in the region that includes the Polish cities of Krakow, Przemysl, and Rzeszow, and also Lviv (Ukraine).


Dr. Tomasz Pudlocki

For further details about the Daemen Summer Program in Poland or the visits by Dr. Hartman and Dr. Pudlocki, please contact Dr. Andrew Wise at awise@daemen.edu.