On Thursday 2^nd October, twenty of our Year 13 students travelled to Warsaw, Poland to explore sites relating to Poland’s time under Russian rule. Students began by visiting the Palace of Culture and Science, originally named the Josef Stalin Palace of Culture and Science,to understand the enduring legacy of Soviet Communist influence in Eastern Europe, particularly in relation to the people that were once ruled over. The next day, students attended a fantastic lecture by Assistant Professor of Russian History at the Pilecki Institute Ian Garner, who provided impressive and valuable insights into Soviet policy toward different nationalities within their territory. This was followed by a workshop in which our students worked splendidly with Polish students their age on source work regarding how the Soviet Union governed different nationalities. They made Richard Hale School immensely proud with their performance.

In the afternoon, we visited a former prison for those who resisted the Soviet installed communist governments of Poland in favour of independence and sovereignty. Students showed maturity, class, and empathy to the suffering of the former prisoners, and gained insights into the impacts of dictatorships and the nature of authoritarian law enforcement. This was followed the next day by a visit to another former prison, this one under the Tsarist regime, in which students had a number of memorable experiences, which included standing in the former prison cell of Feliz Dzerzhinsky, first leader of the CHEKA, the law enforcement agency that would one day morph into the current KGB and FSB, and watching Deputy Head Lucy Gallagher perform as an “accused prisoner” by our tour guide, who, amongst other things, kicked her chair during her “interrogation”. The experience was engaging to say the least!

Our final museum visit was to the National Gallery of Poland, in which students showed a fantastic understanding of the different ways Poland sought to represent itself in 19^th century painting, when the country was under the Tsarist yoke. They asked intelligent questions and listened brilliantly to the in-depth tour they were provided with. Our visit concluded the next day with a birthday celebration for one of our students, who turned 18, and a last-minute visit to an arcade specialising in pinball and past video games, which made Mr. Wolff feel incredibly old as he could actually remember when these games were new on the market.

Our students performed in superlative fashion, and made comprehensive notes during each museum visit as to how the presentations and exhibitions they encountered linked to their exam material. I could not have been prouder to lead a group on a journey across much of the width of Europe, and to introduce them to colleagues of friends of mine that gave their time to make their experience enriching. No group of students could possibly have deserved it more, and the memories and insights will be long and happy.