Period: 2022

A three day international teacher training seminar for 25 educators and NGO activists from Moldova, Ukraine and Poland was held on November 4th – 6th, 2022 in Riscova, Moldova.

Together with our Moldovan partner NGO EcoVisio, we invited educators, community activists and NGO representatives from Ukraine, Moldova and Poland to share best practices on commemorating Jewish history, to promote active citizenship and to discuss how to teach 20^th century Jewish history and the Holocaust to 21^st century students.

“This experience was valuable and I use it in my work with children. We should promote peace and understanding between people and respect the culture of each person. This seminar has inspired me to carry out several activities. I already went with the students to the Jewish cemetery on 20.11.2022 and I am going to carry out other activities in which I will use the experience gained during the Centropa seminar. I will participate in other seminars, conferences and activities on the theme of Promoting Jewish civil society and heritage and Jewish heritage and history.” – A teacher from Moldova

Seminar highlights included:

• Tour of Chisinau by Irina Shikova (Maghid. Jewish Heritage Moldova) on both hidden and visible Jewish heritage within Moldova’s capital and on its outskirts
• Introduction to Centropa‘s Moldovan biographies by Centropa staff and partners
  Screening of Centropa‘s educational short film “Survival in Sarajevo”, exploring the role the Jewish community and a synagogue played during the siege of Sarajevo, as well as the importance of interfaith and international relationships and teamwork
• Interactive group work to develop lesson plans based on Centropa material
• Historical lecture by Irina Shikhova on Jewish history in Moldova
• Preview of the AudioWalk for Bessarabia with Irina Shikhova, guiding listeners through  unheard excerpts describing important landmarks for Jewish Bessarabian history
• Interactive Workshop with Olga Polyak (Insha Osvita), with artistic methodologies and practices which can be implemented when teaching Jewish history 
• Presentation of Centropa’s exhibition ‘Fleeing the Holocaust: Jewish Refugees in the Caucasus and Central Asia’ with an introduction from Irina Sikhova, co-curator, and Ion Ungureanu from EcoVisio

With the help of the German Foreign Office and other supporters, Centropa and its partners in Ukraine and Moldova have held 12 training seminars for over 400 educators in Kyiv, Odessa, Lviv, Chisinau, as well as online workshops during the Covid 19 pandemic.

From September 30 – October 2nd, a teacher training seminar took place in Kutaisi, Georgia. In the three-day seminar, educators from Georgia, Azerbaijan and Germany came together to learn about the Jewish history of Kutaisi and the Caucasus, and to develop teaching materials on the subject.

“I learned how people escaped, struggled and succeeded finding peace in another country, also how the shoa has affected the moral of people who were geographically quite far away. How refugees were treated in these countries and how important it is to fight prejudices and to be welcoming (individually and as a nation) – therefore is important to foster democracy, starting as early as in kindergarten.”
A seminar participant from Hamburg

In cooperation with its Georgian project partner Creative Development Center and funded by the German Federal Foreign Office, Centropa held a teacher training seminar for Georgian, Azeri and German educators in Kutaisi, Georgia from September 30-October 2, 2022. To the seminar came 18 teachers from all over Georgia – including Kutaisi, Tbilisi, Batumi, Kobuleti, and Lagodekhi – as well as two German and two Azeri educators. As the land border between the two countries was still closed at the time due to Covid, unfortunately it wasn’t possible to bring as many Azeri participants as initially planned. The Azerbaijani partner organization Resource HUB was represented by its project coordinator for Azerbaijan, Gulnara Ismailova. 

It was the first Centropa seminar to take place in Kutaisi – the second largest city in Georgia and the country’s legislative capital -, which is a city famous in Georgia for its rich Jewish heritage. The Jewish community of Kutaisi used to be one of the largest in the whole country and still houses three synagogues. Beginning in the 1970s, a majority of Jews from Kutaisi emigrated from the Soviet Union to Israel, which was a migration movement made possible by a group of Kutaisi Jews protesting in Moscow to be able to leave the country. Because of Kutaisi’s renowned Jewish history, there were a lot of educators who applied to join the seminar. 

The exhibition developed in a previous project funded by the Federal Foreign Office, “Escaping the Holocaust: Jewish refugees in the Caucasus and Central Asia”, was put up by the project team in the lobby next to the conference room already on Friday and was on display all throughout the weekend, giving participants the opportunity to visit it whenever they had the time.

“The Exhibition part of the seminar was very thrilling and impressive. I got to know the important letters from different persons, soldiers, prisoners, ordinary citizens; Their emotions and feelings made a great influence on me. I learned how Jewish refugees tried to save their lives and find safe shelter, refuge. How they tried to communicate with their family members , relatives and told about themselves.” Participant from Tbilisi

From 16-18.09.2022 Centropa and the Galicia Jewish Museum hosted a training seminar on Twentieth-Century Jewish History in Media and Literature. Funded by the Federal Foreign Office and the Visegrad fund.

30 participants from Ukraine, Moldova, Germany, and the Visegrad countries attended the three-day program in Tarnów, Poland to learn from experts and each other in various activities ranging from lectures to city walks to workshops and discussions. Olha Kravchuk from Gedankendach hosted a workshop on “The reception of Jewish authors from Czernowitz in today’s Chernivtsi”
and “Rose Ausländer’s exceptional life and work: how it can be conveyed through graphic novels”. Victoria Godik and Joanna Ufnalska from UUJS gave a workshop on ““How to make a film with your students”.
In Tarnow’s city hall: Centropa presented the new Jewish history audiowalk of Tarnów,which is funded by the Visegrad fund and based on the story of Gizela Fudem. Participants tested the audiowalk on site. To access the audiowalk free of charge online, click here: https://audiowalks.centropa.org/tarnow/

We were pleased with the results of the many fruitful discussions and hope to see all the participants again soon!

We thank our partners: Galicia Jewish Museum, Gedankendach and UUJS

Centropas project for the networking of Belarusian teachers. In partnership with IBB Minsk/ History Workshop “Leonid Levin”.

On April 27, 2022 Centropa hosted the online final event of the Pamjat project “Digital Bridges to our Jewish History” and welcomed 40 participants from Belarus, Germany, Poland and the Czech Republic. The event was held in cooperation with IBB Minsk, the Leonid Levin History Workshop and IBB Dortmund and was specifically aimed at teachers from the various partner countries. It was made possible through the support of the Federal Foreign Office and the Visegrad fund

The program of the evening started at 6:00 p.m. with a technical introduction and various welcomes and introductions of the guests, followed by the official speeches of Astrid Sahm (IBB Dortmund) and Siarhei Andrushkevich (IBB Minsk). Afterwards, the participants were introduced to the new exhibition of Centropa and IBB “Jewish Life in Belarus”, designed by the Office of Remembrance Culture. (https://pamjat.centropa.org/exhibition/)

Participants then discussed in groups how this exhibition could be used in their classes and presented their findings to the larger group. Afterwards, Iryna Kasthalian (formerly of the Leonid Levin History Workshop, now in Germany) and Ninja Stehr (Centropa) presented the newly developed AudioWalk of the Minsk Ghetto (https://audiowalks.centropa.org/ru/minsk-ru/) . 

Siarhei Tukala, director of the Leonid Levin History Workshop discussed the usefulness of the AudioWalk for educational work. Again, participants were invited to share their thoughts on the AudioWalk with the group.

The evening concluded with the much anticipated award ceremony for the Pamjat Student Competition. This year Pamjat received more entries from Belarus and Poland than before and, as always, the high standard of images and text submitted was impressive. The winners of the 2022 student competition can be found here

(https://pamjat.centropa.org/winners-of-the-youth-competition/) 

Our first in-person Trans.History training seminar in Georgia will take place at ZP Palace in Tbilisi from April 9-10, 2022. Together with our local partner, NGO Creative Development Center (CDC), we will bring together 25 educators and civil society activists from Georgia to discuss and share best practices on teaching and commemorating 20th century Jewish history and heritage, as wells as to promote tolerance and active citizenship. We want to thank our supporters, the German Federal Foreign Office and the Israeli Embassy in Tbilisi, for making this seminar possible.

This is what your can expect during our three day in-person training seminar in Tblisi:

• Historical lecture by Teona Tkhelidze on  Jewish community life in Georgia and specifics of cultural assimilation
• Presentation of Centropa’s newest travelling exhibition “Escaping the Holocaust – Jewish refugees in the Caucasus and Central Asia” at the David Baazov Museum of History of the Jews of Georgia and Georgian-Jewish Relations
• Sneak preview of Centropa’s new Georgian Jewish history Podcast series
• Walking tour to Jewish sites of interest in Tbilisi guided by Keti Chikviladze (Hillel Tbilisi)
• Marketplace of Ideas in which teachers from Georgia (as well as from Moldova and Germany) present best-practice examples on teaching Jewish history in the classroom
• Online lecture on “Discussing antisemitism in Moldova and Georgia” with Diana Dumitru (Associate professor at Ion Creanga Pedagogical State University in Chisinau, Moldova) and Ran Gidor (Israeli Ambassador in Tbilisi) with discussion

This seminar is open for Georgian educators and representatives of Georgian NGOs. The conference languages will be Georgian and English (simultaneous interpreting will be provided).

Like the Trans.History project on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/trans.history.project/

Wherever we go, all across Europe we encounter the traces of a once rich Jewish culture. This is a heritage that crosses borders, and connects us all today. For this seminar, we invited educators from the Visegrad countries as well as Moldova and Ukraine to visit the Tokaj region of Hungary where a large Jewish community has once flourished, and learn about methods and best practices of teaching Jewish history and the Holocaust today. The language of the program was English and Hungarian.

The seminar took place March 4-6th, 2022 in Tokaj. On Friday, the participants were introduced to the rich history of the region by Mr. Miklós Kálmánovits and welcomed by Mr. Michael Winzer, Head of the Konrad Adenauer Foundation Office in Hungary, who emphasized the importance of a culture of remembrance and the involvement of future generations in dealing with the past.

The participants of the seminar explored the Jewish heritage of the Tokaj region (the old and the new synagogue of Tokaj, the synagogue of Madi, the Jewish memorial and the Jewish cemetery of Italilisk), learned personal stories and teaching methods (biographies, films, exhibitions) from the Centropa database and reflected together in interactive group work on the use of educational materials.

Supported by KAS Hungary und Visegrad Fund

For an impression of the seminar, take a look at the photos below.

Chisinau, Moldova, April 9-10, 2022

The Centropa Trans.History training seminar took place in Chisinau, Moldova on April 9-10, 2022. Centropa and our local partner, the NGO EcoVisio, brought together 25 educators and civil society activists from Moldova to discuss and share best practices on teaching and commemorating 20th century Jewish history and heritage. During the seminar, participants were introduced to Centropa’s educational material for Moldova, worked with Centropa’s educational tools, participated in a hybrid exchange with Georgian and German teachers on the use of digital tools in teaching, digital storytelling and comparative remembrance culture, and were introduced to Centropa’s AudioWalk of Jewish Chisinau.

The seminar was made possible by the German Federal Foreign Office.

Like the Trans.History project on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/trans.history.project/