Projects for Teachers

On August 30-31, 2018, Dnipro city welcomed the first stage of International Seminar for History Teachers “The Holocaust by Bullets in the Occupied Territories of the Soviet Union”, organized by “Tkuma” Ukrainian Institute for Holocaust Studies and French research and education center Yahad-in Unum.

For more than a decade, this organization has been working on a study of the tragedy of Jews in Eastern Europe and, above all, the Soviet Union. Looking for eyewitnesses for mass shootings, Yahad-in Unum staff tries to restore the real picture of the genocide of East European Jews, which for many people in the world continues to be a little-known aspect of history.

Public mission of Yahad-in Unum, includes three main components:

1. Learn. Yahad-in Unum searches and explores the places of massacres and collects information related to the total destruction of Nazis by Jews in the occupied territories. To date, employees of the organization collected information about 2,133 mass shootings site, Yahad-in Unum data base contains 5298 evidences of mass extermination of Jews. All this was the result 124 field studies that took place in 8 European countries (Ukraine, Belarus, Poland, Romania, Moldova, Lithuania, Macedonia and Russia).

2. Teach. Yahad-in Unum conducts international workshops and seminars aimed at disseminating knowledge about the Holocaust and other genocides.

3. Apply. “Holocaust by Bullets” – model of violence that continues to operate in the world even now. The study of this still-unknown page of the Holocaust serves the commemoration of the victims of mass executions, as well as the study and prevention of modern phenomena of genocidal character.

This year, due to the cooperation of “Tkuma” Institute and Yahad-in Unum, 20 educators from all over Ukraine got a unique opportunity to get acquainted with the methodology and practicalities of the two scholarly institutions in the field of teaching the Holocaust history.

The French part was represented by Julia Garmash, Yahad-in Unum educational programs coordinator, and Patrice Bensimon, research director.

Ukrainian experience of studying “Holocaust by Bullets” was shared by Dr. Yehor Vradii, “Tkuma” Institute research department head, and Dr. Denys Shatalov, deputy head of research departments.

During the seminar, the stages of mass murder of Jews of Ukraine by Nazis were the subject of detailed consideration, several practical sessions were conducted with the visit to the mass shooting site in Dnipro; educational guided tour through Museum “Jewish Memory and Holocaust in Ukraine”.

During the discussions, the motivations of the local non-Jewish population behavior were discussed in conditions of total extermination of Jews. What factors did contribute to the salvation of people in the time of Nazi genocide? Why was this aspect of the Holocaust beyond the attention of society and researchers for a long time?

Seminar participants was particularly interested in the presentation devoted to the study of little-known genocides of the 20^th c. – Roma during the Second World War, Maya – during the Civil War in Guatemala and modern tragedy of Yazidis – religious group living on the territory of the Middle East and the Caucasus and is subject to discrimination, persecution and violence by religious fundamentalists of the ISIS.

It is important to note that the August meeting was only the first stage of the seminar; the second phase will take place in France, where participants will be able to continue the dialogue on the research and teaching of the Holocaust.

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