Learning in the 'Land of Ashes': 'Poland' through the windows of a bus on the Toronto March of the Living

This dissertation seeks to determine how learning in situ in Poland during the March of the Living (a trip which takes young Jews to Poland and Israel) shapes the curricular experience of Holocaust education. It examines the trip’s purpose of constructing Jewish self and communal identities through the history, and what impact that may have on the participants’ understanding of history, their Jewish identity and the Polish-Jewish relationship. This qualitative research study revolves around three questions: What pre-existing beliefs and attitudes regarding Poland do students bring into the trip? How do pedagogical choices employed in Poland change the narrative of the Holocaust from static to active? And, how does this act of experiential Holocaust education shape the participants’ beliefs, actions, and relationships with the Jewish community over time? It determines that many participants have a tendency to ‘inherit’ negative memory and myth about Poland from previous participants and family members, and the March’s creation of a ‘Poland’ that exists entirely as a Jewish construct certainly reinforces those pre-trip attitudes. Once there, the conflict between experiential and formal education that the program tries to negotiate results in the prioritization of emotional understandings of history over intellectual ones. The common use of ‘embodiment’ within the trip encourages students to “enter history” on the side of Nazi victims, and in the absence of Nazis, local Poles surrounding the students become placeholders for the perpetrators and bystanders as a counterpoint to the students’ embodied ‘victim.’ The highly emotional, identity-building pedagogy on the trip feeds into various types of ‘modeled’ types of Jewishness presented to students throughout the trip, and the most pervasive form students exit with is one that is both under threat and empowered (represented by Holocaust and Israel respectively). This research indicates that the March attempts to bridge both educational and identity-building agendas, but is at present unable to successfully negotiate that tension, resulting in students lacking considerable knowledge about the Holocaust. Their Jewish identity building measures also seem to work to change attitudes, but not behaviours. This would indicate mixed levels of success for the March of the Living’s key goals.

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