With help from a Texas education fund, an Ashland teacher is preparing for what she calls the trip of a lifetime: a visit to Holocaust sites in Poland.
Cara Merrill, who teaches middle and high school English at Ashland District School, weaves history into her classes. One topic she and her students are most affected by is the World War II slaughter of more than 6 million Jewish people by Hitler’s Nazi regime.
Merrill will visit Poland from June 18 to 27 thanks to a fellowship award of $4,000 from the professional development organization Fund for Teachers. With visits to Auschwitz, Birkenau and more, she will gain knowledge to share with her students about the historic period. And in order to keep such crimes of intolerance from happening again, humanity must learn and remember, she said.
“It’s the idea that humankind can be so horrific, and yet people can find the strength to power through,” Merrill said. “If we don’t know about these events, then we have the potential to repeat them.”
Merrill is one of only three teachers in Maine selected for the funding, but she will be the only one spending it on a trip to Poland. In the southern part of the state, Sophia Manning of Massabesic Middle School will partner with Kristen Wurth of Biddeford Middle School on a trip to Ecuador, fund officials said.
The nonprofit Fund for Teachers “supports educators’ efforts to develop skills, knowledge and confidence that impact student achievement,” according to its website. The organization awarded 357 grants this year, totaling more than $1.6 million, for U.S. teachers’ summer learning experiences in 79 countries.
Merrill will “research across Poland the impacts of both World War II and the Holocaust on that area to help middle school students understand the need for tolerance and acceptance in a world where this is limited,” the fund stated in a listing of 2025 awardees.
The application process itself was grueling, Merrill said. She was required to detail her rationale for the trip, list the sites she wanted to visit and what knowledge she wanted to bring to her students. Applicants had to explain how what they learned would make a difference in their own and their students’ experiences.
When she learned she had won funding, her jaw dropped, she said. The news came at the end of a class, and her students broke out in applause and cheers.
Her husband, Brian, who teaches math at Ashland District School, will go with her. Her grant of $4,002 — she had to itemize every facet of the trip including food and lodging — will pay for her expenses, and he will pay his own way. He will share knowledge with his students, also, in his “this day in history” teachings, she said.
Merrill is amazed at the numbers of people who either don’t know about the Holocaust or don’t believe it happened.
One of her writing assignments asks students to look at a photo of Jewish people during WWII, standing in line, awaiting their fates. The students then pick one person in the photo and write what they think that person could be feeling.
“It is quite the eye-opener when you look through the eyes of someone else,” she said.
“This is the stuff that makes the difference. When you can learn about history and the human condition, that’s real learning.”
Many students have told her that assignment was one that affected them most, she said.
Despite the heaviness of the history, Merrill is eager to experience the aura of the sites she will visit.
At the top of her list is Auschwitz, one of the most notorious death camps where more than a million Jewish people perished in the gas chambers. This was the most brutal camp of the roughly 40 that existed in Poland, Germany and France, she said.
She will also visit the remains of the nearby Birkenau, another concentration camp, as well as the Galicia Jewish Museum in the Kazmierez district of Krakow and the Schindler Enamel Factory in Krakow, where the famed Oskar Schindler saved the lives of many by employing them in the factory. The site is now a historical museum.
She will also make time for some lighter attractions, including a zoo and a palace, to soak up the positive aspects of the city. She’s already developed her itinerary and bought all the tickets they will need.
It amazes Merrill that Krakow has endured its dark and violent past to become a beautiful and popular tourist city, literally rising from ashes into a new life.
What she wants most is to teach kids to tolerate different people and that they, too, can rise from the ashes. Looking at real hardship may let them know that some of their challenges are minor, and that they are able to overcome things, too, she said.
“If I can teach tolerance, if I can teach understanding, opening up their minds to the fact that there are people with different cultures and religions, that’s huge,” she said. “And I’ll be able to do it better having had this experience myself. I think it will be a life-changing experience.”
