Carnegie Mellon University

Group Travels To Witness Poland's Jewish Past and Present

July 28, 2017

Group Travels To Witness Poland's Jewish Past and Present

By Ann Lyon Ritchie

The soft smile on the face of a Holocaust survivor at a heritage festival was one of this summer's memorable moments for Laurnie Wilson (DC'16). She imagined he had moments in his life when he thought smiling would never again be possible. Wilson, a freelance writer, recently returned from a study seminar in Poland where she met Howard Chandler, age 89, and learned about his early life and a Jewish culture that was eradicated by Nazi Germany.

Classrooms Without Borders (CWB) coordinated the tour and offered funding to a small group of Carnegie Mellon University faculty. They extended an invitation to Wilson based on her fiction and photography work as a Dietrich Honors Fellow, her bachelor's degrees in creative writing and history and minor in German. She felt honored.

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