Ursula Szczepinska, Curator of Education & Director of Research at The Florida Holocaust Museum, developed this study guide to accompany the traveling exhibition of black and white photographs taken by a Polish artist Lukasz Baksik. Baksik shows in his photographs how gravestones (matzevot) from Jewish cemeteries in Poland have been misused as building material or everyday objects after the local Jewish communities had been destroyed during the Holocaust. The study guide helps educators address questions regarding memory, history, community, respect, responsibility and challenges readers to think about our local history and historic sites. The guide can be used with the exhibition or independently.

Lesson objectives:

• Students will examine the ways in which Europe’s Jewish community was affected by the Holocaust.
• Students will consider the long-term impact of the Holocaust on the 20th and 21st centuries.
• Students will examine concepts of memory, history, community, dehumanization, respect, responsibility.
• Students will investigate what happened to the Jewish communities in Eastern Europe during the Holocaust.
• Students will examine the post war fate of historic sites.