On 13 June, the pupils of the Tolerance education center at Ąžuolas gymnasium in Varena met Fania Brancovskaya, who survived the Holocaust in Lithuania.
The pupils of the Tolerance education center at Ąžuolas gymnasium in Varėna were waiting for a meeting with Fania Brancovskaya, as they had reviewed a documentary film “We remained human” during their lessons. The film was created by the YadVashem institution and tells the story of Fania Brancovskaya’s life. During the meeting, a non-traditional history lesson, the guest told not only about the life of the prisoners of the ghetto in Vilnius, the exhaustive work or the struggle for survival, but also remembered her childhood summers in Senoji Varėna, school friends and teachers in Vilnius as well as beautiful moments from her youth until the Nazi occupation. After the meeting with pupils, Rūta Jasevičienė, the coordinator of the Tolerance education center, helped Fania Brancovskaya find the former house of Fania’s grandparents in Senoji Varėna, where a Jewish bank was operating in the interwar Lithuania, and Fania’s grandfather was the only employee in that bank.
The meeting of the pupils of the Tolerance education center of Ąžuolas gymnasium in Varėna with the Holocaust witness Fania Brancovskaya was organized by the Secretariat of the International Commission, which implements an educational program, where one of the directions is a live communication with witnesses of historical events.
