Spain launches its first educational program in Auschwitz

Spain has launched a pioneering project to bring students to various sites of Holocaust remembrance around Europe.

The first trip will include Spanish students from the French secondary school in Madrid (including one member of the Spanish Jewish community) and from the Madrid Roma community will visit Cracow and Auschwitz from the 2 to 6 July. The students will discover the rich cultural life of Jewish and Roma communities before the genocide in order to highlight their contribution to European culture, as well as the magnitude of the tragedy of the extermination camps.

This experience has a double educational value, as it is the first trip to the sites of Holocaust remembrance with Spanish students (18 years old on average) and because of the pedagogical emphasis on values such as tolerance, respect and coexistence among cultures that the program seeks to promote.

The trip is also unique due to the variety and background of the students, who belong to very different social and cultural environments. The planned activities will strengthen the values of education and intercultural dialogue.

For Madrid's Roma community it will be the first time they ever visited an extermination camp where so many Roma were killed.

The trip, organized by Casa Sefarad-Israel with the support of the French Secondary School of Madrid and the Embassies of France in Madrid and Warsaw, is part of an educational program instituted by the Spanish Inter-Ministerial Group on Holocaust Education, Remembrance and Research.