Written by Lila Frost, (Cornell University), CET Prague, Spring 2024
CET Prague has included two Traveling Seminars. The first brought us to Krakow, Oświęcim (the city of Auschwitz), Brno, Mikulov, and Vienna, and the second to Budapest and Szentendre. These seminars have been a highlight of the program. They provide academic scaffolding to our exploration of the cities in order to supplement our core coursework and give us room to wander on our own.
I am in the Modern Jewish History Program, so our guest lectures, walking tours, and museum visits pertained primarily to Central European Jewry in the 20th century. In Krakow, we toured the city center and Jewish Ghetto, met with a Holocaust survivor, attended a guest lecture on post-war Jewish life in Poland, and ate a big traditional Polish meal together.
In my free time I went to the Krakow-Plaszow Concentration Camp. It was almost completely destroyed and—save a few plaques—hard to recognize for what it had been. It was tucked away behind a gas station and playground. Two people sat at the top of a hill having a picnic, and a few others walked their dogs through the trails. It was chilling to walk through and markedly different from the experience I would have at Auschwitz the next day.
That night, I sought out a klezmer concert (Jewish folk music), in a refurbished mikvah (ritual bath) in the heart of the former Jewish Ghetto. As it turned out, I couldn’t get tickets, but I met some of my friends for dinner at the attached restaurant. The conversation we had then about our nervousness for the next day, family histories, and modern Jewish lives is one of my favorite memories from the seminar.
The day at Auschwitz-Birkenau was hard, of course. I was grateful for the time we had to wander through Birkenau barracks alone at the end of the tour. It was haunting, but I was glad to have visited. In the first seminar, we went to place after place that had many Jews, pre-war and post-war, very few (in Oświęcim, for example, there was only one). Coming face to face with this loss, though disillusioning, was incredibly educational.
Our time in Poland was certainly not all gloomy. We saw some wonderful exhibits—such as that one Krakow—and attended a lively, welcoming shabbos dinner where I befriended a Polish Jewish girl.
Mikulov is a Czech city on the border with Austria. Our tour guide pointed to the line where the iron curtain had formerly stood. Historically, Mikulov housed a large Jewish population. On our time off, I wandered up to an old Jewish cemetery at the top of the hill. It was beautiful, with blankets of moss and huge snails climbing the tilted gravestones. I ended up lying in the grass while the sun set, reflecting on the previous days of the seminar. I loved the cemetery so much that my friend Ruby and I got up early the next morning and wandered back over there with our coffee to enjoy the morning light.
Vienna was magical. At the end of the seminar, my friends Ruby, Sam, Michael, and I peeled off from the group to enjoy the city for a little while longer. The weather was perfect. We lay in the park, wandered through museums, ate schnitzel, and spent our evenings sitting by the edge of the Danube.
(Left) Here are Cady and I outside of the Hungarian Parliament. Just beyond this picture is the shoe memorial on the bank of the Danube, which we saw together. (Right) Ruby, Michael, Sam, and Cady, upon arriving in Vienna. Our time here was fun and relaxing! It was nice to recover together after some intense days in Poland and Moravia.
The second Traveling Seminar to Hungary, though much shorter, was packed with memorable experiences. We toured the former Jewish Ghetto, the Dohany Synagogue, and the Hungarian Parliament. The next day, we went to Szentendre and the Szechenyi baths where we oscillated between saunas and cold plunges. The saunas were so steamy we could hardly see.
I am grateful to CET for coordinating these seminars and introducing me to three countries I had not yet been to. I had a wonderful time exploring with my friends. It is amazing being able to reference the experiences that my classmates and I had together back in the classroom.