On June 19-23, a group of 30 teachers and educators participated in Vilnius in the international seminar “Learning from the Past – Acting for the Future”, eager to develop their competences to teach about the Holocaust in an interdisciplinary way, especially since many of them are teaching other subjects than History, such as Lithuanian language, English language, Geography, Ethics.
The teachers were welcomed by the Ambassador of the United States of America in Lithuania, the Ambassador of Israel in Lithuania, the Vice-minister of Education and the President of the Jewish Community in Lithuania. They had the opportunity to learn about the history of the Holocaust in Europe and in Lithuania and to look at it through the lens of human rights and intercultural education. They participated in workshops which helped them reflect on stereotypes and prejudices, as well as on what motivates people to be upstanders in front of social injustices. They listened to the testimony of Holocaust survivor Assia Raberman and also to the presentation of Silvia Foti, granddaughter of Jonas Noreika. They visited the Holocaust exhibition and the Paneriai Memorial, the Jewish Vilna and learned about Jewish traditions. They were supported o make an action plan with educational activities for their students on the Holocaust and human rights.
The seminar was organized by The Secretariat of the International Commission for the Evaluation of the Crimes of the Nazi and Soviet Occupation Regimes in Lithuania and The Olga Lengyel Institute for Holocaust Studies and Human Rights, and it took place in the framework of the project Knowledge and Critical Understanding of History – A Key Competence for Democratic Culture, co-funded by the European Union through the CERV programme.
More information here.
The program of the seminar: Program Seminar Lithuania 2023.
