photo: snapped on my phone before heading to the airport

This blog was written on Power of Place: 2025 European Summer Institute for Holocaust Educators – 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 Kevin Dailey, 2024 Kentucky Teacher of the Year, Ballyshannon Middle School, Union, Kentucky

June 13, 2025 | Day 1: Travel and Focus

I cried today.

Looking for a poem to set me on this journey, I thumbed through a book from a dear friend. I flicked through the lessons of love, acceptance, discovery and hope, and I landed on the last page: “The Truth Will Stand When The World’s On Fire” by Willie Edward Taylor Carver.

I cried because I felt this poem in my bones. I felt the transformation of a teacher of commas to a teacher of human beings. I cried because I felt the urgency of truth and resistance.

I also smiled.

I smiled because I remembered the mountain of memories I shared with my students. I smiled because of the privilege I have to bask briefly in the light they shine on this world. I smiled because I know that this world made anew that Willie describes is a world better because of that light. And I was there.

This trip is one that I am looking forward to, not excited, but seeking. As time creeps up on the few remaining survivors of the Holocaust, the places they survived still exist. I want to stand in those places. I want to seek out the echoes of the people who were there. In a way, I want to discover the thing that I could never teach or learn in a history class. The power of a place, the complexity of a moment, the depth of a memory. I want to know that discomfort so I can more accurately and completely find the discomfort in my own story and heal it, and so that I can help others do the same. I am a teacher of human beings, in all of their light and all of their complexity. So I must go on this journey.

I hope in time, I can walk away from this experience with a deeper commitment to kindness and love, and much like my time in Rwanda, a broader capacity for forgiveness.

Even though the day is just beginning. I think this is all I can write for now.

–

“And as mamaws have foretold,
Since they first made biscuits and whispered stories in these hills,
There we stood.”

Poem by Willie Edward Taylor Carver, Jr, 2022 Kentucky Teacher of the Year