INTERNATIONAL SUMMER PROGRAM ON THE HOLOCAUST (ISPH)

The International Summer program on the Holocaust (ISPH) is a unique educational opportunity for students from American and European colleges and universities to learn about the past in an intercultural setting. Students from different religious and national backgrounds study, live and travel together for one month in the United States, Germany and Poland.

The mission of the International Summer Program on the Holocaust is to create understanding of the contemporary significance of the history and legacy of the Holocaust through a four-week long dialogue between Jewish and non-Jewish students. Each program consists of several components, including extensive group sessions, workshops, lectures and testimonies by guest speakers, open forums, visits to museums and actual sites related to the Shoah and the history of National Socialism.

All participants receive scholarships for this one-month long summer program.

The program is temporarily on hold

• General information and application
• Sample of program session: What is Auschwitz today?
• How can I support the program?
• Published Reports
• Literature relating to the ISPH
• American board of directors

The goals of the program are:

• to bring together students of different religious, cultural and national backgrounds to study the impact of the Holocaust on their lives and communities
• to give the third generation an opportunity to reflect on their family histories and on the intergenerational transmission of the trauma of genocidal events
• to raise awareness of the history of antisemitism and of the impact of the Shoah on contemporary society
• to give students guidance in how to explore honestly their relationships in light of Auschwitz
• to understand the social consequences of victimization
• to encourage articulation of their concerns regarding the Holocaust
• to reduce prejudices and build bridges across separate memories
• to improve future relations between people of different cultural, religious and ethnic background

Participants meet for the first half of the program at St. Mary’s College of Maryland and the Washington D.C. area, where they explore family history, study antisemitism and the Shoah, visit the Archives of Captured German War Documents and the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, and meet with scholars, community activists, and Jewish survivors of the Holocaust and their children. They then travel to Berlin (Germany) and Auschwitz and Cracow (Poland) for a concentrated examination of how the Holocaust is dealt with and remembered in these countries.

 

The program covers topics such as:

• Visiting significant sites (U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, archives, Jewish sites in Berlin, etc.)
• A four-day trip to Auschwitz-Birkenau
• Meeting with Jewish communities and Jewish-American families
• Intergenerational transmission of the Shoah/Holocaust
• Family history
• Holocaust commemoration and memorialization
• Contemporary racism, and problems of assimilation and identity
• Conversations with Jewish survivors and children of survivors
• Readings and lectures by authors, scholars, community leaders in the US and Germany
• Discussions about the burden of the past and contemporary responsibility
• Interactive group sessions (open forums, role playing, “living sculptures”)
  

The programs have been offered in 1989, 1991, 1993, 1995, 1999, 2002, and 2005. The current American host organization is St. Mary's College of Maryland in conjunction with our German partner organization Action Reconciliation/Service for Peace, Berlin. Other partners in the past have included Bridge of Understanding, Drew University Center for Holocaust Study, Anne Frank Education Center in Frankfurt, the Berlin Evangelische Akademie, the Institut für Geschichtswissenschaften, Berlin, and the Philadelphia Interfaith Council on the Holocaust.

Programs director is Dr. Björn Krondorfer (Professor of Religious Studies, St. Mary's College), working in the past together with Dr. Christian Staffa (Director of Action Reconciliation/Service for Peace, Berlin), Dr. Constanze Jaiser, Berlin, and Elisabeth Anthony (Washington and Vienna/Austria). An American board of directors assists in the organization of the ISPH.