Dajani's cave
Posted on: February 9, 2021; Updated on: February 9, 2021
In 2014, Mohammed Dajani, longtime professor at Jerusalem’s al-Quds University, took
27 Palestinian college students to Auschwitz, the Nazi concentration camp near Krakow,
Poland. He wanted them to confront the Holocaust, which he believes is downplayed
in Palestinian schools, and to consider the complicated history of the Israeli-Palestinian
conflict from multiple perspectives. The backlash, however, would cost him his job
and endanger his life. It would also embolden his commitment to reconciliation.
Mohammed Dajani is a man without a country. Born in Jerusalem in 1946 but driven to
Egypt in the Nakba, or Palestinian exodus, during the Palestinian-Israeli War of 1948.