Neue Wege der Holocaustvermittlung

Our two organizations' commitment to meaningful teaching about the Holocaust motivated our commitment to share methods, thoughts and experience about it. In our view, contemporary teaching about the Holocaust should include the reflection of social change processes. The awareness of the demand for work tools and considerations regarding digitalization, the end of contemporary witnesses and anti-Semitic movements connected our organizations and, in our view, had to be addressed.

We wanted to bring together a group of teachers from France with a group of teachers from Austria that are dedicated to teaching the history of the Shoah and want to learn from each other. Discussing contemporary needs and reflecting on our experience in this field could not just let all of us learn and grow also our organization would benefit from an intensive exchange. Since the results of our work could also be helpful for other teachers, they were summarized in a methodology and made accessible throughout both our networks.

We planned and held two meetings each in Paris and Graz. The planning meetings ("Kick-Off" and "Fertigstellung der Ergebnisse und Planung") allowed the organizations to get to know each other better and organize the further process with the teachers. We then held two working meetings ("Arbeitstreffen 1 & 2") with the participating teachers as weekend seminars in Paris and Graz. Finally, we presented the results together online, as agreed with our national agency.

A methodology on the possibilities of contemporary teaching about the Holocaust, which is available to interested teachers, was written and presented. Two of the participants began to put the methods into practice and initiated a project with their students. In which they collaborated to write the biography of the resistance fighter, Anna Sussmann. They even got invited to present their biography in the French ambassy in Vienna. Following their example and our methodology two other couples of French-Austrian teachers have started working with their students up to now.