The Krzyżowa Foundation for European Understanding was established 35 years ago, a few months after the German-Polish reconciliation mass on 12 November 1989, which was attended by the heads of government of Poland and Germany, Tadeusz Mazowiecki and Helmut Kohl.

The Krzyżowa Foundation is a non-profit Polish non-governmental organization whose international educational work aims to overcome the division of Europe resulting from the Second World War. It has always been important to the foundation to create spaces in which European relations can develop on the basis of mutual respect, dialogue and a willingness to reconcile.

The foundation is based in a 19th-century estate complex located in a small Lower Silesian village near Wrocław. Until 1945, the estate belonged to the von Moltke family. During the Second World War, the Krzyżowa Circle resistance group, founded and led by Helmuth James von Moltke and Peter Yorck von Wartenburg, met in Krzyżowa. The members of this group were convinced that National Socialism could not survive in the long term because of its internal and external violence. They developed concepts for a constitutional and democratic Germany in a free Europe. One third of the members were executed after 20 July 1944.

Today, the foundation is active in various areas: an international youth meeting center (the largest in Poland), a memorial site, a European academy and an international conference center.

From the outset, the foundation’s work has pursued the goal of promoting peaceful coexistence between people of different beliefs, religious affiliations, nationalities, cultural backgrounds and of passing on the legacy of Krzyzowa. In this context, various national and international training courses and conferences are held with different European and non-European countries. Topics of civic education include historical-political education and democracy education, media education, sustainability, and forced migration.

The Krzyżowa Foundation is involved in various projects that are explicitly aimed at young refugees and actively address the topic of forced migration: Jazda! – ‘Remembering together – shaping the future’. The project is aimed at young people from Germany, Poland and France, with and without a history of forced migration, who deal with borders, border experiences and overcoming borders, participate in youth encounters and have developed an exhibition on the topic. ‘Likthar’ is also an encounter project in which participants from Poland, Germany and Ukraine take part and exchange ideas about their different life situations.

…we want to gain new impulses for our historical and civic education work and learn about new methods from cultural education work that we can use effectively in our educational work with young refugees. We also hope to expand our national and international network and learn about the different situations of refugees in the participating European countries, coupled with the question of how we can make good use of the existing framework conditions for international educational work and share resources.