Chelsea: A Brief Introduction

This is me: Chelsea Champion!

Jolanta Ambrosewicz-Jacobs (left) and our professor Dr. Procario-Foley (right) during the lecture on the eve of our departure - kicking off our Polish experience!

Hello, everyone! Let me begin by saying that I am glad you are following our trip; I hope that you enjoy keeping an eye on our travels and learning along with us! My name is Chelsea Champion and I am currently a sophomore in the Honors Program here at Iona. I am a double major in Spanish and Sociology with a minor in Peace and Justice Studies. I am from Upstate New York (the Utica area) and this will be my first time experiencing international travel! As the hour of our departure nears I am getting more and more excited!

Though this program and the accompanying class will fulfill one of my graduation requirements, I am not taking it solely for the credits. I see this course - RST 425PO Memory and Reconciliation: The Churches and the Holocaust - as a great learning experience and probably for most people, a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. My interest in Holocaust studies began in high school. I was fortunate enough to have a great English teacher in both my Junior and Senior years that was fascinated with and well-versed in Holocaust education. So at a fairly young age, I was exposed to the horrors of the Holocaust and the hopefulness of post-Holocaust reconciliation and memorial. I even had the very fortunate experience of meeting a local survivor on more than a few occasions - an experience that is becoming more and more rare as the survivors (a primary source and personal testimony to the atrocities of WWII and the Holocaust) are passing away.

While learning about the Holocaust I have always realized that only those who have witnessed the Holocaust first-hand will ever truly understand what happened. However, through education and dialogue, others can attempt to gain a better understanding of this horrible time in history and learn to empathize with and memorialize the victims. I hope immersing myself in the actual context of what I have been learning about will drive home the fundamental lessons of Holocaust education - that these atrocities really happened, that they must be studied and remembered, and that we must work to be sure that discrimination and genocide will one day cease to exist.

As discussed this evening by Jolanta Ambrosewicz-Jacobs, after being suppressed for decades under a communist government, Poland is finally beginning to come to terms with the Holocaust and is working to construct a collective memory of this time in history and educate the young population in order to subdue and change anti-Semitic attitudes. Though Poland, due to its unique history and circumstances, has had much difficulty in establishing discourse in regard to the Holocaust and still has much room for improvement, other efforts at Holocaust education exist world-wide. I hope to learn a lot from this trip and to come back to the United States and Iona fully able to contribute to this international effort.

Can't wait to leave tomorrow!