Power of Place: 2026 European Summer Institute for Holocaust Educators is 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, Allianz of America Corporation and MINNE (Minnesota Norway Education Israel & Holocaust Fellowship).

by Morgan Mitchell, White River Middle School (White River, South Dakota) | June 24, 2026 | Lodz, Poland

Holocaust education is heavy. It’s overwhelming. Regardless of where you look or study. Primarily, people focus on the victims, while others look at government policies, survival stories, historical places, and others. However, it’s more complex, this heavy weight. It will break into bits as it falls into our minds. Some people would rather ignore it, laugh about it, and many teachers (students, too) ask, “How do you teach it?”

The process takes time, depending on size of space. The world is in process, not just me or my classroom. It’s maybe too large. Nothing of this magnitude could be forgotten or healed. The weight of the sadness is also significant. Loss of a loved one, a family, neighborhood, town, the exceeding scale is almost unimaginable. It’s not just death; loss of home, loss of belonging, and loss of identity. It’s not seen, but felt.

We’ve been following the diaries of Salvaged Pages. These young people who had these experiences that no adjective can do justice. They wrote their days of life in the ghetto, in hiding, etc. They all wanted to live, not just breathe. They also wanted to make their own identity. The weight of this sadness varies. We may wonder, where will it settle? On the ground, the Earth, which all is hallowed? In our hearts and souls? For it is certainly not something to take off one’s clothes, shoulders, or heads. There’s no brush, soap, water, or scrub to remove it.

It’ll linger. It’s permanent.

I have felt as though I’ve been dunked into a well of history. There’s a pressure in my chest in sites of slaughter. My ears have ached to better hear the silence in places of eternal rest. My feet have tread the trails of thousands of last paces, and I felt the energetic sediment. This year‘s Power of Place has challenged me emotionally and spiritually as I’ve explored my understanding of humanity.

I wonder how it will settle, the sediment in this well of history. It’s all over the world. How will it settle in this world? Will teachers, students, historians, and researchers take to their shovels to dig deeper into what’s at the bottom? Will they reach out their hands fully extended to the floating particles, looking to settle?

We know more is to fall, some quickly, while other sadness, slowly. There’s a responsibility to learn and to teach. It is difficult at times, how would you know? Unless you look and you must take care. Reflect on the history of a place. Stand where others before you stood. Bear witness to history as you read or listen to their words. Dig your feet into the sediment and reach out for what you don’t yet now.