Taking a step into the Polish past and present, a group of students from St. Louis U. High, Nerinx Hall, and St. Joseph's Academy boarded a flight on May 25, 2024, for a 16-day summer exchange program. They landed in Krakow, Poland, and had classes at SLUH’s Jesuit partner school, Kostka High School. Students stayed with exchange families in their homes and learned about Polish culture. Director of Global Education Rob Chura traveled with the students.

In Krakow, students had the opportunity to visit Oskar Schindler's Enamel Factory, a former metal factory. Krakow was a major filming site for the movie Schindler's List, which featured this factory.

Students visited Auschwitz and had the chance to speak with a Holocaust survivor, who was given up by her parents during the war because of her Jewish descent. Students discussed with her what her childhood was like as a refugee hiding her identity. Chura remembers in particular a plaque in a gift shop that he thinks represented what students took away from the experience: “Eleventh Commandment: Don’t be a bystander.”

After a week in Krakow, students traveled north by train to Gdynia, Poland, on the Baltic Sea. They visited another SLUH partner school, St. Stanislaus, and again stayed with new host families. Students learned about more modern Polish history in Gdynia, where they visited the Gdansk shipyards and the European Solidarity Center, where the Solidarnosc movement was started by Poland’s first president, Lech Walesa.

Students had a day of service in Gdynia, where they visited Dom Marzen, which translates to “House of Dreams.” Don Marzen is a home for mentally handicapped adults and teens to develop independent skills. Students worked with the residents and heard their stories.

Chura oversees many exchange programs throughout the year, but it is a much rarer occurrence when he attends one. The two partner schools in Poland often participated in virtual exchange programs, so Chura wanted a chance to visit in person, with the hope of establishing a Polish exchange program. His first visit to Poland was planned for March of 2022. When war broke out in February between neighboring Ukraine and Russia, it gave Chura a new purpose for the trip.

While volunteering to assist Ukrainian refugees, Chura and school administrators realized that the war in Ukraine was not going away soon. This exchange program was the result of SLUH and its Polish partner schools wanting to play a positive role, and they have succeeded in doing so. As the war has slowly simmered down, the service aspect of the trip shifted to more local community service in Krakow and Gdynia.

“When the war started in February, that added an extra dimension to the potential program that we were hoping to develop together,” said Chura. 

Chura wanted to give his Russian students a chance to view the war up close, and to see and talk to Ukrainian refugees flooding in. The program became more focused on Poland and less on Russia over time, and it is now open to all students. Despite not having a Polish course at SLUH, Chura feels that this trip teaches students a valuable lesson about a different culture.

As stated by Chura, the goal of this and all other programs is to create an opportunity for students to engage with peers and adults, celebrate differences, and connect and collaborate.

“That word ‘collaborate’ is so powerful and important. Cooperate is one thing, where everybody comes together and agrees to do things by the same set of rules. Collaborate is when people come together and really do something that’s new and exciting that both groups have developed together,” said Chura.