In Rijeka, Croatia, Centropa Institute organized a seminar in cooperation with the Education and Teacher Training Agency (ETTA-AZOO) where the range of lectures and workshops enabled the participants to trace the history of Jews in Southeast Europe, especially the history of Jews in the City of Rijeka.
5-7 May 2023
Thirty teachers from Croatia, Slovenia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia and North Macedonia gathered in Rijeka, from the 5th to 7th May 2023 to participate in the seminar about teaching Jewish history and the Holocaust in the Western Balkans. The seminar was organised by Centropa, in cooperation with the Education and Teacher Training Agency (ETTA-AZOO). Centropa was founded with the aim of keeping Jewish memory in Central and Eastern Europe, in the Balkans, Baltic and former Soviet Union, and then sharing the materials with the widest possible public. Based on a rich archive, Centropa develops thematic web pages, multimedia, films, travelling exhibitions, education programmes and illustrated books. They digitalised over 25,000 family photos and privately owned personal documents. Recently, Centropa engaged in the production of documentary films, developing applications for guided walking tours and podcasts. Important parts of Centropa’s activities are dedicated to teacher training.
Dubravka Brezak Stamać, PhD, the Director of ETTA, pointed out in her opening address that for 20 years ETTA has successfully been organising training events for teachers on teaching and learning about the Holocaust in Croatia. The signing of the Memorandum of Cooperation between ETTA and Centropa resulted in widening the opportunities for teachers to take part in regional and international training events. Furthermore, these activities contribute to raising the quality and availability of training for teachers that relates to teaching and learning about the Holocaust.
The range of lectures and workshops enabled the participants to trace the history of Jews in Southeast Europe, especially the history of Jews in the City of Rijeka. Teachers took part in the market of ideas about a range of good practice teaching examples based on Centropa’s materials and created teaching plans for the film Zahor.
Loranda Miletić, ETTA Senior Adviser, presented a workshop titled “What is unique about the Jewish cemetery in Đakovo, and what can we learn about it?”. Participants in the workshop researched into the little-known history and events that happened in the concentration camp and Jewish cemetery in Đakovo during the Holocaust, why people made different decisions during this time and what were the consequences.
