This spring, Fort Hays State University Assistant Professor of History Dr. Amber Nickell and Professor Hollie Marquess traveled with 13 students to Warsaw, Krakow, Oswiecim, and Auschwitz to explore Jewish life in Poland before, during, and after the Holocaust.

Yom HaShoah, known in English as Holocaust Remembrance Day or Holocaust Day, is an annual commemoration held in Israel on the 27th of Nisan on the Hebrew calendar (April 18 this year in the U.S.). The purpose is to remember the approximately six million Jews who were murdered in the Holocaust and of the Jewish resistance against the Nazis and their collaborators.

Nickell and the students visited the site of the 1943 Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, the Auschwitz concentration camp, and a local coffee shop located in a 100-year-old house in the nearby town of Oswiecim that was once owned by the last Jewish resident in the city. The group also visited the Jewish Community Center in Krakow, where they met with members of the local Jewish community.

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Amber and her students reflect on their experiences in the video below.