Penn Med students selected for professional ethics fellowship

Three University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine students ­—Rachel Hadler, Jim Suk Kim, and Karen Revere were among 30 graduate students nationwide who will participate in Fellowships at Auschwitz for the Study of Professional Ethics’ New York, Berlin and Poland program.

The two-week program, under the auspices of the Museum of Jewish History, accepted 15 medical students and 15 law students out of approximately 100 applicants, according to MJH Deputy Director Ivy Barsky.

On the trip, students will learn about the contemporary ethics of their professions “through the lens of the Holocaust,” Barsky said.

The introductory American portion of the program began on Sunday, June 20 at the Museum of Jewish Heritage in New York City. Participants visited the museum’s exhibits and met with Holocaust survivors.

The European portion of FASPE will begin in Berlin, where students will study the city’s historical and cultural sites. They will also take part in educational workshops at the House of the Wannsee Conference — the site where, in 1942, representatives of the Nazi Party convened to coordinate plans for the “Final Solution.”

The group will then travel to Krakow, Poland to learn about the city’s Jewish, Catholic and Polish history before traveling to Auschwitz, where they will tour the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp and work with the staff at the camp’s State Museum.

Students will learn what people in their professions were doing during the Holocaust — but the emphasis is on contemporary ethics, Barsky said.

During the trip, participants will keep daily journals, which will eventually be made into a publication. Students may also be asked to produce a “think-piece,” which could take a number of forms including a research paper.

This is the first full-fledged FASPE trip, although the MJH piloted trips in January and March with faculty and staff.

As early as next year, the MJH plans to expand the program to include separate trips for seminarians and journalists, Barsky explained.

Future trips may include business students as well. Applications for future FASPE trips can be found at mjhnyc.org/FASPE.

SP News Editor Mohana Ravindranath contributed reporting to this article.

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