Teaching Jewish heritage in your class. Using Jewish cemeteries in education.

On September 13-14, we organized our seminar ‘Teaching Jewish heritage in your class. Using Jewish cemeteries in education’ in Banska Bystrica, Slovakia, in partnership with the Museum of the Slovak National Uprising (Múzeum Slovenského Národného Povstania). The aim of this seminar was to offer teachers background information, methodologies and tools of how they can include Jewish heritage sites in their teaching and to introduce them to Centropa resources and encourage them to use them in their own classrooms. Highlights of the seminar included:

• A lecture on the history of Jews in Slovakia by Jaromír Wolt;
• A workshop on epitaphs and tombstone symbols by professor Carsten Wilke, which 76.5% of participants found useful
• Presentation of Centropa materials: interviews, family photographs and our education film on the Slovakian Jewry. The film on Katarína Loefflerová was found useful by 95% of participants
• Groupwork of teachers to develop lesson plans based on Centropa materials
• Groupwork on how to include Jewish cemeteries and local heritage sites in classroom teaching.
• A visit in the local Jewish cemetery led by Jaromír Wolt, head of Jewish religious community Banska Bystrica.

35 educators and guests attended the event from 19 cities. We are proud that Branislav Grohling, the Minister of Education even attended the seminar in person.

You can find the program here.

We want to thank our supporters, the European Commission, for making this online training seminar possible.