For the past 8 years, Mrs. Annick Berthod, history-geography teacher, and Mr. Igor Bonnet, English teacher, have been taking the students of Terminale to the places of the Shoah’s memorials in Poland. This journey, which lasts several days, is the subject of a documentary that is produced afterwards.
The trip to Poland is in line with the history and history-geography, political science and geopolitics programmes of the Terminale, and also within the framework of the school project.
The aim is to prepare our students to become citizens conscious of the challenges of the past, present and future of participatory democracy, by studying and visiting the places where the extermination of a people took place and thus the annihilation of humanism, the very cornerstone of democracy.
Classes, discussion groups and workshops at the Mahn-und-Gedenkstätte in Düsseldorf prepare the students for the trip.
Restitution of the trip to Poland
On Monday 27 June 2022, the Terminale students shared their experience of the class trip to Poland with their parents and fellow students from Première.
The students expressed themselves through speeches, testimonies and a video and tried to share their feelings and considerations that the journey from Auschwitz to Lodz, via Krakow and Chielmnik, had provoked. The objective was to prepare the future “Terminale” students for this final project as well as to stress its importance.
This evening was dedicated to two former deportees who left us this year: Raphael Esrail and Elie Buzyn to whom history owes a great debt. As there are fewer and fewer deportees, we have a duty to continue to pass on the history of the Shoah. Thus, the Terminales felt the need to share their experience in Poland and thus participate in the work of Jewish memory.
We would like to thank Mr Joseph Kastersztein, a friend of Raphael Esrail, and our professors, Mrs Berthod, who organised the trip, Mr Bonnet, who accompanied them, the Principal, Mrs Boursault and Mr Besançon, who were present at the event.
The Masters of Ceremonies, Inès Leon Roubaud and Rodolphe Uguen.
Our project on the web page of the Foundation for the Memory of the Shoah
The Foundation has written an article about us which we invite you to read and also to watch the video made by the Terminale students. We thank the Foundation for their annual donation to this project.
We would also like to thank our two professors, Mrs. Annick Berthod and Mr. Igor Bonnet, for sharing this precious teaching every year with the students.
