photo: Lev Gringauz – TC Jewfolk

This blog was written on JCRC’s Power of Place educators institute in Europe – an experiential professional development for teachers where learning unfolds as they tour historical sites across Europe in order to transform their understanding of the Holocaust, WWII, antisemitism, and Jewish life today. Power of Place is planned and co-led by Humanus Network on behalf of JCRC and generously supported by the Minnesota Vikings, the Tankenoff Families Foundation, and Allianz of America Corporation.

by Lev Gringauz in TC Jewfolk | July 31, 2024

A few years ago, Laura Zelle was seeking out Holocaust education trips to Europe for Minnesota K-12 teachers when she realized that there weren’t many options.

“This wasn’t being offered very much, especially to teachers in the Midwest,” said Zelle, the now-former director of Holocaust education for the Jewish Community Relations Council of Minnesota and the Dakotas.

“There was really a need for an experiential, professional development opportunity, rooted in factual history – and what is better than taking people to the place where this occurred?” she said.

So Zelle decided the JCRC should do its own Europe trip.

Through the early years of the COVID-19 pandemic, the JCRC workshopped the idea together with Kristin Thompson – who runs Humanus Network, a Holocaust education consulting organization – and in 2023 launched “The Power of Place,” a European summer institute for Holocaust educators.

The successful pilot trip took a group of 18 teachers from across the Midwest (and other parts of the country) to cities and sites like Nuremberg; the Dachau and Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration and death camps; Krakow; and Oslo.

This year’s trip, cementing The Power of Place as a staple of the JCRC’s Holocaust education offerings, brought 16 teachers to sites like the Treblinka death camp; a rural Polish town to learn about the Holocaust by Bullets; Berlin; and Prague.

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