Seven New York state grade school and high school teachers visited concentration camps in Auschwitz, Checkpoint Charlie -- the crossing point between East and West Berlin during the Cold War, and marveled at the architecture of Prague as part of an educational tour of Eastern Europe, thanks to Cornell's Institute for European Studies and funding from the European Union Grant Commission.

The July 24-Aug. 2 tour was part of the institute's ongoing "Getting to Know the New Europe" community outreach project, which was designed to improve the understanding of the politics, social diversity and culture of such East Central European countries as the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland, and to improve K-12 instruction about Europe by promoting new course material aligned with the New York State Learning Standards and social studies, history and geography curriculum requirements.

"We wanted to give teachers in this region something concrete and tangible that they can use in the classrooms," said Catherine Perkins, the institute's K-12 outreach coordinator who co-led the trip with Phillip Ayoub, a graduate student in the area of government, a Humboldt fellow of the German Chancellor and Fulbright fellow to the European Union.

"The idea is not just to enrich the curriculum, but also for teachers to show their rural communities that there is a huge world out there," Perkins added.

The trip began in Berlin, where Ayoub led a walking history tour that included the site of the bunker where Hitler was killed, Checkpoint Charlie and a Turkish mosque.

"We talked about the issues of immigration, diversity and cultural awareness in Berlin and other European countries and how Islam was viewed," Perkins said.

Then, the group visited Prague in the Czech Republic, Krakow in Poland and Budapest in Hungary. "Prague has beautiful buildings, it's a fairy tale city, full of tourists, and Krakow was just as beautiful," said Perkins.

In Prague, the group visited with officials from the Czech Republic's Ministry of Foreign Affairs at their offices in the Czernin Palace. The visit was made possible by Czech Republic President Václav Klaus, a Cornell non-degree alumnus ('69 economics), who revisited Cornell in September 2010.

After taking a 1960s Soviet-era train from Prague to Krakow, the teachers attended lectures at Jagiellonian University and viewed the city's landmarks from a boat on the Vistula River, among other things. They also traveled to the site of the Nazi concentration camp in Auschwitz, which "was sobering and harrowing and left an indelible mark on all of us," said Perkins.

"For the class I teach on Nazi Germany and the Holocaust, I have listened to survivors, visited the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, watched hundreds of hours of video, read countless memoirs and historiographical material, and completed a good deal of research in graduate school, but none of that compares to the experience of actually being in Auschwitz," said Ashley Eccleston, a teacher at Cincinnatus High School.

In Budapest, the teachers toured the European Center for Roma Rights and were serenaded during dinner by Roma gypsy musicians.

Now that the group is back in the United States, the teachers will use their experiences to produce lesson plans, which will eventually be posted on Cornell's Institute for European Studies website for anyone's use. The teachers will also take part in focus groups to gauge outcomes for students.

Along with Eccleston, the touring teachers included: Erin Shane and Nancy George (Horseheads High School); Amy Ivers (York High School); Samantha Phillips (Mayfield Elementary School); Kara Wilcox (Dryden High School); and Breana Copp (South Seneca Middle School).