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During a transformative journey through Germany and Poland, Princeton Seminary students joined peers from Philipps-University Marburg for the travel course Religious Education After Auschwitz. Together, seminarians and emerging educators from several countries explored how faith, education, and remembrance intersect in confronting humanity’s darkest chapters—studying the history of the Holocaust, reflecting on the church’s response, and considering how education can help prevent future dehumanization.
Religious Education After Auschwitz is taught by Rev. Dr. Gordon Mikoski, Associate Professor of Christian Education at Princeton Theological Seminary, Chair of the Department of Practical Theology, and Editor for Theology Today. Along with his co-chair, Rev. Dr. Marcell Sass, Full Professor for Practical Theology and Religious Education at Philipps-University Marburg, Germany (founded 1527) – the oldest Protestant university in the world. Sass also serves as director of Marburg’s Teacher Training Center.
Building on Princeton Seminary’s own audit on slavery, the course encourages honest self-reflection on difficult histories and invites cross-cultural and cross-disciplinary dialogue about faith’s role in confronting injustice.
The travelers reflected on historical tragic events that happen in both countries while learning how to apply the lessons from those experiences. They tried to answer the question: Why and how can oppressive events like the Holocaust, and slavery in the United States, and Apartheid in South Africa occur while pastors and teachers were preaching the basics of religion? Sass adds, “We were remembering things that happened in our nation’s different histories and what we could learn from them, for shaping the future of teaching religious education in a changing world.”
Mikoski adds, “Preaching and teaching the bible isn’t merely spiritual, [students] will gain the knowledge that teaching the bible will always have political relevance because we are embodied creatures that live in society. They can expect to be unsettled – a lot of what we encounter will raise questions that you have to live with…. personally, they will gain a lot in understanding themselves better through interactions with people from another cultural context. They will encounter Auschwitz and other symbols of the human potential for evil. They will also visit Weimar, a symbolic highlight of German culture, and Krakow to learn about Polish history. They will also visit Marburg, a progressive town in Poland, and the Volkswagen factory to learn of its roots during the Nazi era.”
For German students and Professor Sass, this was an opportunity to reflect on the work of German philosopher Theodor W. Adorno, whose post-war writings highlighted the responsibility of art, education, and philosophy to speak out against potential future genocides.
Dealing with the Holocaust is relevant in every academic field when we teach the younger generation to shape the future.
Students shared reflections upon their return, describing how the course challenged their perspectives and stirred deep emotion. MDiv middler Lindsay Gordon was moved to create poetry inspired by her time in Poland and Germany.
Before the group even departed for their journey, Gordon sensed the experience would change her in lasting ways.
“Before we left for our travel course, I would tell people that I believed this experience would be transformative,” she said. “I did not think I could possibly visit the places on our itinerary and return the same person. I believe I was right.”
Gordon and her classmates knew the journey would be both physically and emotionally demanding. Yet she recalled that alongside moments of grief and heaviness, the trip was filled with unexpected beauty and connection.
“We willingly ventured into some very dark places, knowing that this course would be intense,” she said. “Even with those places on our itinerary, the experience was filled with so much beauty and moments of levity. A lot of that had to do with the people we traveled with, both from our Seminary cohort and the cohort from Marburg. There’s just something about travel that creates a bond between people.”
Those bonds, she added, became vital when the group encountered sites of immense historical trauma.
“We relied on one another for support when we visited the emotionally heavy places, and we lifted each other’s spirits by enjoying time in community in the moments between.”
Returning home, Gordon found herself processing what she had seen through both a theological and historical lens. The trip, she said, reshaped her understanding of responsibility, communication, and faith in public life.
“I’ve realized how limited my own understanding was—how easily people can fall for propaganda if they’re not properly equipped,” she reflected. “Since coming back, I’ve been paying closer attention to how I speak to others and what I speak to them about.”
As she continues her studies toward an MDiv and prepares for doctoral research in liberation theology, Gordon believes these experiences will continue to shape her—academically, spiritually, and personally.
“I am incredibly grateful to have gone on this journey and know that it has impacted me profoundly.”
At the end of the course, students were given creative freedom in how they processed their learning. For Gordon, that freedom became an outlet for poetry.
“Dr. Mikoski gave us creative freedom with our final reflection projects, and as a poet, I rejoiced at the opportunity to keep a travel diary of poetry,” she said. “I had a goal in mind to write at least one poem a day to reflect on our experiences—and I ended up surpassing that goal most days.”
While Gordon processed her experience through poetry, fellow MDiv middler Emma Stewart grappled with a different question: how remembrance itself can become a form of faith in action.
For Stewart, the course prompted her to wrestle with the enduring weight of memory and the moral responsibility it carries for future generations.
“How do we bring remembrance into the future? This question was at the front of my mind throughout my entire trip to Germany and Poland, exploring sites related to the Holocaust,” she said. “Remembering is painful, but necessary. As physical evidence disintegrates and the last survivors die, those who visit the sites become memory bearers.”
Stewart reflected on the sacred tension between grief and renewal—how memory can compel both lament and transformation.
In remembering those who died and remembering those who were complicit, we move into an understanding that this type of event can never happen again. Redemption and remembrance are tied to our future commitment to action in the face of fascism and dehumanization. This trip taught me that remembrance is both stillness and action, both sadness and hope.
As students wrestled with history, so did their professors. For Rev. Mikoski and Rev. Sass, the trip was a reminder that teaching is never confined to the classroom—it unfolds through the unpredictable, human moments that challenge both mind and spirit.
“For me, it’s not the syllabus that matters most,” said Sass. “I could write the greatest syllabus imaginable, but it’s the human interaction across cultural contexts that gives it worth.”
That belief was tested when the group encountered unexpected obstacles. “We had a great plan,” Mikoski recalled, “but things arose that we didn’t foresee. When we got to Kraków, we were told that our tickets to Auschwitz had been canceled and there were no tickets for the next day. That sent us into problem-solving mode. That’s what I want to teach my students—the practice of ministry, whether in church or nonprofit settings. Good theories are not enough. Situations arise, and you can’t rely only on what you learned in school; you have to think creatively in the moment—and preferably, with other people.”
Throughout the journey, both professors witnessed how moments of disruption and discomfort became opportunities for growth. “The most disturbing moment for us was when we walked through the death camp,” Sass said. “Afterwards, participants needed a group session so they could process their emotions.” Later, Mikoski reflected on how beauty and culture also became part of that healing. “The students visited German playwright and poet Friedrich Schiller’s house,” he said. “Schiller wrote about anti-authoritarianism, beauty, and freedom. It was good for our American students to see that German culture is not reducible to the horrible things that happened in the Third Reich.”
Connection and community also shaped the learning experience. “When we were on the train from Berlin to Kraków, students were helping each other,” Mikoski remembered. “They didn’t know each other well, but through the simple act of lifting heavy suitcases and organizing themselves, they came together in a spontaneous way.”
For Sass, that same spirit of connection continued beyond the trip. “We connected with our students through WhatsApp,” he said. “During that long train ride, students created one group to share course information—and then they started posting photos of what they did together. That was really touching. The sum was more than its parts. The proof was in the pictures they shared.”
The professors noted that meaningful learning often happened outside formal settings. “The time we spent talking while in local markets was important,” Sass added. “That doesn’t happen during a 90-minute class. This will be one of the experiences they remember most about their time in our schools.”
Mikoski agreed, emphasizing that education must address the whole person. “We were also able to incorporate worship, which provided a way for people to process grief and hope,” he said. “Education is not just ideas; it’s also spirituality and community.”
For both educators, witnessing history firsthand deepened their sense of responsibility as teachers and global citizens. “There are still a lot of people trying to kill Jews; antisemitism is on the rise,” said Mikoski. “Nothing like this should happen to immigrants, LGBTQ+ people, any racial group, or to women.”
Sass added, “Being a global citizen means resisting stereotypes and easy explanations for heavily complicated conflicts such as Gaza… Sometimes people wish this world could be easy and that someone could solve all the problems. What we encourage our students to do is never stop asking questions.”
Drawing from Princeton Seminary’s own slavery audit, Mikoski and Sass hope the course will shape their students’ future ministries, scholarship, and leadership—encouraging them to reflect on history with a purpose rooted in justice and faith.
“I hope it will radicalize my students,” Mikoski said. “I want them to be moderates and to be critical thinkers—but when it comes to human dignity and value, they should be extremists in supporting each and every life and community of people. I learned through the Seminary’s slavery audit and the Holocaust that, when it comes to human dignity, you can’t be a moderate; you have to be a radical. And I hope my students get that.”
Sass found similar hope in the unity forged between their two cohorts. “Eighty years after the Holocaust, when Americans and Germans once fought each other, they are now trying to make this world a better place together,” he said. “That gives me hope that this new generation is capable of seeing beyond national or personal interest and realizing that the reign of God is a gift to us, but it’s not forbidden for us to engage in it.”
