Traces of the Holocaust in the Present

A Psychodrama Training Project in Kraków and Auschwitz

The The Kraków – Auschwitz-Psychodrama Project is about all of us. It deals with the inter-relations between two parts within us: the aggressor and the victim.

This project is a professional psychodrama training process. It is a dynamic active unmasking group workshop using Psychodrama and Sociodrama in order to encounter the traces of the Holocaust in our present life. We will explore the different ways we internalise experiences in the roles of the aggressor and the victim. This experience may bring an encounter with the “other” and with the “different”. It may not lead to forgiveness or reconciliation, but can heal some of the wounds. Above all, it may open a dialogue.

This special project is open to students in training and professionals who wish to deepen their understanding and knowledge and others who are interested in the following subjects: “Traces of the Holocaust in the Present” and” Encounter with the Other and the Different”. No prior experience in psychodrama is necessary.

Peace is not the lack of conflicts. We believe that our work as professionals should be devoted to learning how to live with the conflicts. The first step of such a process is to learn to accept the other. Instead of projecting to others the unaccepted shadows we believe that it is more important and effective to encounter the enemy within ourselves.

We chose the Galicia Jewish Museum in Kraków and Oswiecim as our place of working because of its symbolic powerful reminder of The Past in The Present.

The Kraków – Auschwitz Psychodrama Project is a European based event organised by PIfE open to participants from Europe and other international countries and cultures. The language will be English with different translations. The leaders of this project are living examples of the fruits of this dialogue. They have been involved in creating a psychodramatic space for encounters between Jews and Germans from the Post-Second
World War generation.

Directors

Hilde Goett – Training Director Dipl.Soz.Päd. – born in Romania as a granddaughter of SS members whose wives were deported to Siberia. She is certified Trainer and Supervisor (DGSv) of Psychodrama for the “Psychodrama Institute for Europe”(PIfE) and serves as its Chairwoman. She is a Children and Adolescent Therapist, focusing on trauma, domestic violence and suicidal cases.

This Project also has been lead for many years by Yaacov Naor. He recently past away and we are still reminding him.