Branchburg Teacher Attends Holocaust Study Program In Poland

BRANCHBURG, NJ — A Branchburg Central Middle School teacher has returned home after being selected for a 2026 Holocaust education program in Poland.

Nicole Kepner of Branchburg was among 14 middle and high school teachers and Holocaust center personnel from five states chosen for the Jewish Foundation for the Righteous 2026 European Study Program in Poland.

The program is designed to give educators a deeper understanding of the Holocaust through lectures and visits to historic sites.

According to the foundation, the intensive program included visits to concentration camps, ghetto sites and Holocaust memorials.

Historian Robert Jan van Pelt accompanied the group as the program scholar.

The study program began in Warsaw, where participants toured the Jewish Historical Institute and met with Poland's Ministry of Foreign Affairs Secretary of State Dr. Władysław Teofil Bartoszewski.

The group also attended a luncheon with Polish Society of the Righteous Chairman Emeritus Dr. Anna Bando and Polish Society of the Righteous President Andrzej Mikolaklpw.

Participants visited Jewish and Catholic cemeteries, including the gravesite of Irena Sendler, and stops also included the Footbridge of Memory memorial, the POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews, the Rapoport Monument and the Żegota and Jan Karski memorials.

They also walked through the former Warsaw Ghetto, including Mila 18 and the Umschlagplatz.

The trip continued to Tykocin, Łopuchowo Forest and Treblinka.

Other sites included Chełmno nad Nerem, the Kulmhof extermination camp, Rzuchów Forest, Łódź, the Radegast Station Museum, the Marek Edelman Dialogue Center, Survivor's Park, Auschwitz I and Auschwitz II-Birkenau.

Additional stops included Harmęże, Budy, Himmler's carp ponds and Kraków, where the group toured the Kazimierz neighborhood, the Galicia Jewish Museum and the Podgórze neighborhood, the site of the former ghetto and its chair memorial.

"As we continue to move further away from the Holocaust, it is more important to empower our educators to better teach their students about the Holocaust," said JFR Executive Vice President Stanlee Stahl. "By visiting the places where these complex events occurred, educators are better able to connect to what they are teaching, making them more effective teachers."

"The program is designed to help educators learn the Holocaust experientially so they can present it in a more meaningful and insightful way to their students and colleagues when they return to their schools," she added.

The Jewish Foundation for the Righteous said it continues to provide monthly financial assistance to aged and needy Righteous Gentiles living in 10 countries. Since its founding, the organization has provided more than $46.5 million to aged and needy rescuers.