Projects for Teachers

At the end of September, Ukraine remembers one of the most terrible tragedies of its own history of the 20th century – the beginning of executions in Babyn Yar on September 29-30, 1941. The first victims of Nazi terror were Kyiv Jews. The total extermination of the Jews was the main goal of the planned and large-scale genocide, which the authorities of Nazi Germany purposefully prepared and implemented from the very beginning of the German-Soviet war. Babyn Yar is one of the most famous symbols of the Holocaust outside of Ukraine. At the same time, this place is part of the memory of the crimes of destruction of other groups of “enemies of the New Order”: the mentally ill, Soviet prisoners of war, Roma, clergy.

For the first time during the Nazi rule in Ukraine, such a large number of people – almost 34 thousand people – were killed in one place in just two days. In the next two years of occupation, Babyn Yar turned into a place of death for almost 100,000 people.

As part of events dedicated to commemorating the victims of Nazi terror, “Tkuma” Ukrainian Institute for Holocaust Studies together with the Museum of Genocide “Territory of Memory” (Odesa) held a one-day seminar for more than 70 history teachers and teachers of extracurricular education on September 26, Odesa.

The director of the Genocide Museum “Territory of Memory” Dr. Pavlo Kozlenko and the director of “Tkuma” Institute Dr. Igor Shchupak addressed the participants of the seminar with an opening speech.

During the speech, Dr. I. Shchupak presented to the participants the updated program of the elective course “History of the Holocaust” for students of grades 10-11, recommended for use in the educational process by the Ministry of Education and Science of Ukraine, and also told how the history of the Holocaust and other genocides of the 20th century implemented in the history of Ukraine and world history courses for high school students.

During the class the deputy director of “Tkuma” Institute, Dr. Yehor Vradii, told the participants of the seminar not only about the little-known aspects of the tragedy that unfolded on the outskirts of Kyiv in September 1941, but also about the peculiarities of the distortion of the memory of the Holocaust in the USSR. How did the official depersonalization of the genocide and its transformation into a “tragedy of peaceful Soviet citizens” compete with the living memory of relatives and friends of the Jewish victims of the Holocaust? How did literature, music and painting and, in fact, the artists themselves, despite the intense pressure and censorship restrictions from the authorities, find a way to transmit the undistorted memory of Babyn Yar from generation to generation? Why the memory of Babyn Yar and the Holocaust in Ukraine in general, the understanding of the phenomenon of the genocide of the Jews, as well as other genocides that are an integral part of the history of Ukraine in the 20th century, are relevant and extremely important today.

Among the other issues discussed during the joint discussion was the search for the most effective methods of teaching the history of the Holocaust in secondary schools. One of them is the stimulation and development of students' creative activity, in particular in the form of individual and group research projects, artistic understanding of the Holocaust tragedy, etc.

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