Teachers From 5 States Join Jewish Foundation For The Righteous Intensive European Holocaust Education Program

The program is a high-level, intensive and immersive educational experience that includes visits to concentration camps, ghetto sites and Holocaust memorials. Noted historian Robert Jan van Pelt, one of the world’s leading experts on the Holocaust, served as the accompanying scholar for the program.

The immersive program began in Warsaw, where the group toured the Jewish Historical Institute (Zydowski Instytut Historyczny, ZIH), met with Poland's Ministry of Foreign Affairs Secretary of State Dr. Władysław Teofil Bartoszewski, hosted a luncheon with the Polish Society of the Righteous Chairman Emeritus Dr. Anna Bando and Polish Society of the Righteous President Andrzej Mikolaklpw and visited both the Jewish and Catholic cemeteries, including the gravesite of Irena Sendler. They also visited the Footbridge of Memory memorial, the POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews, the Rapoport Monument and the Zegota and Jan Karski memorials. They walked through the former Warsaw Ghetto, touring Mila 18, the Umschlagplatz.

The group then traveled to Tykocin, home to one of Poland's few remaining intact shtetls, before visiting nearby Lopuchowo Forest, the site of the mass grave of Tykocin's Jewish community and continuing to Treblinka.

The trip also included visits to Chelmno nad Nerem, the Kulmhof extermination camp, Rzuchow Forest, Lodz, the Radegast Station Museum, the Marek Edelman Dialogue Center, and Survivor's Park, Auschwitz I and Auschwitz II-Birkenau. Additional stops included Harmezze, home to Marian Kolodziej's Labyrinth; Budy, the site where SS female guards massacred French Jewish women; Himmler's carp ponds; and Krakow, where the group toured the Kazimierz neighborhood, the Galicia Jewish Museum's and the Podgorze neighborhood, the site of the former ghetto and its chair memorial.

Throughout the program, participants connected and reflected on how to bring their experiences back to their students.

“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,” said JFR Executive Vice President Stanlee Stahl. “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.”

“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 added.

The 2026 European Study Lerner Fellows include:

Angie Thompson of Alma Bryant High School in Irvington, Alabama

Maureen Carter a veteran high school educator who resides in Sanford, Florida

Mary Ellen Richichi of Independence Middle School in Jupiter, Florida

Krystal Lamb of Dr. Joaquin Garcia High School in Lake Worth, Florida

Charles Hagy, Jr. of The Benjamin School in North Palm Beach, Florida

Kelly Warsaw of inSIGHT Through Education in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida

Julie Gates of Logger's Run Middle School in Boca Raton, Florida

Sheri Crowley of Polo Park Middle School in Wellington, Florida

Bradd Weinberg of School District of Palm Beach County in West Palm Beach, Florida

Micaela McNiff of School District of Palm Beach County in West Palm Beach, Florida

Charles Dickens of The Florida Holocaust Museum in St. Petersburg, Florida

Julie Klein of Fenwick High School in Oak Park, Illinois

Nicole Kepner of Branchburg Central Middle School in Branchburg, New Jersey

Stacy Steele of York Comprehensive High School in York, South Carolina

The JFR continues its work of providing monthly financial assistance to aged and needy Righteous Gentiles living in 10 countries. Since its founding, the JFR has provided more than $46.5 Million to aged and needy rescuers. Its Holocaust teacher education program has become a standard for teaching the history of the Holocaust and educating teachers and students about the significance of the Righteous as moral and ethical exemplars. For more information, visit: https://www.jfr.org/.