Bearing Witness to the Night

March 2024 Many mornings, as something of a ritual affirming my connection to a Home Place, I log on and connect to a webcam feed from Big Sand Lake in northern Minnesota. Over a cup of coffee 600 miles away, I can look east from a webcam mounted on a pole at a resort—the same […]
The Receptivity of Bearing Witness & How we Rekindle it after Shutting Down

As Peacemakers or Buddhists, we face the challenge of dropping our fixed ideas and opinions in order to meet difficult situations freshly, with open hearts. Meanwhile, the world keeps hitting us with louder displays of brutality, dehumanization, and disregard for life, including the systems that protect it. How can we alleviate our desperation and connect […]
Remember This (trailer)

After surviving the devastation of the Blitzkrieg, Karski swears allegiance to the Polish Underground and risks his life to carry the first eyewitness reports of war-torn Poland to the Western world, and ultimately, the Oval Office. Escaping a Gestapo prison, bearing witness to the despair of the Warsaw ghetto and confronted by the inhumanity of […]
A Community Discussion About the Israel Hamas War

Join us for an informal panel discussion about the war in Israel and Palestine with guests living in the region.
Auschwitz Retreat Q&A Session

Since Bernie Glassman, Jishu Holmes, Eve Marko, and Andrezej Krajewski began the annual Bearing Witness Retreat at the old site of the death camps of Auschwitz-Birkenau in Oświęcim, Poland in 1996, the Zen Peacemakers have been returning for over twenty-five years to continue to bear witness to oneness in diversity, in the place that became a […]
Pearls of Ash & Awe – Readings from AschePerlen

Pearls of Ash & Awe—AschePerlen is a book that documents 20 Years of Bearing Witness in Auschwitz with Bernie Glassman & Zen Peacemakers. During this event, several of the authors will read their – or other – testimonies from the book. After reading, we will take time to share in a mindful way. You will […]
Q&A Session for Native American Bearing Witness Retreat 2023

In preparation for this in-person retreat, ZPI Executive Director Geoff O’Keeffe will hold a Question and Answer session. This retreat which will take place July 9-15, 2023 is part of a seven-year program during which we have visited several sites sacred to our Native American elders, and have been invited to share their history and culture. Our […]
GERMAN PRIEST AT THE THRESHOLD OF AUSCHWITZ

This is the story of a boy who was born in post-war Germany, when the Holocaust was not talked about in schools and families. Going as a young pacifist to volunteer in Israel preceded by a visit to Auschwitz, he did not know what shock awaited him. Years later, already as a priest, he returned […]
Healing the Scars of History

Healing the Scars of History BY LINDSAY KYTE| FEBRUARY 9, 2023 Retreats are being held at Auschwitz, a former plantation, and a site where Indigenous people were massacred. Lindsay Kyte reports on how retreatants are finding freedom from their ancestral pain. Approximately a million people died at the Nazi concentration camp Auschwitz II-Birkenau. It was the […]
Poem from Ukraine
Bitburg – September 2022 Grandma Ida sent letters and money to her family in Poland ― or was it Ukraine? Until the letters came back stamped, Undelivered. The addressees had been delivered, and the entire town disappeared. In Bitburg, last fall, her grandson paid a visit to the well festooned section of cemetery […]

