The seminar for Czech schoolteachers entitled “How to Teach about the Holocaust” was held in Terezín and in Prague between May 27 – 29, 2022.
The Terezín Memorial has been organizing the seminar since 2000 in conjunction with the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sport of the Czech Republic, the Jewish Museum in Prague, and the Museum of Romani Culture in Brno.
This year´s event was inaugurated on Friday in the Jewish Museum in Prague, with its participants moving to the Terezín Memorial in the evening. The less-than-three-day course featured lectures, sightseeing tours and workshops designed to introduce to the teachers, for instance, the history of Jewish settlement in Bohemia and Moravia, issues of anti-Semitism, psychological aspects of genocide, basic principles of teaching about the Holocaust, the propaganda role played by the Terezín Ghetto, history of the Romani genocide and other subjects. Accompanied by experienced lecturers, the schoolteachers viewed the exhibitions of the Jewish Museum in Prague, former Terezín Ghetto and also the former Gestapo Police Prison in the Small Fortress in Terezín.
On Saturday afternoon the participants had a chance to join one of the three workshops in which they themselves tested the methods used in teaching about the Holocaust. For its part, the Terezín Memorial prepared its workshop, routinely included in the seminar programs for school groups known as “From a Number to a Nameˮ, then a lecturer from the Museum of Romani Culture in Brno presented the workshop “How to Teach about the Romani Holocaust” and the third one entitled “Extreme Situations in Human Life: Ester, story of the Old Testament heroine” was led by Dr. Jana Jebavá from the JABATO agency who is also originally a teacher and former graduate of the seminar.
The most popular part of the program proved to be online debate with Mrs. Helga Hošková-Weissová, who – as a girl – had passed through the Terezín Ghetto and the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp, and was liberated with her mother in the Mauthausen concentration camp.
The seminar was attended by 41 Czech schoolteachers from different schools throughout the Czech Republic. ”How to Teach about the Holocaust“ is the first-level seminar within the four-tiered structure of training courses devoted to the subject and organized by the Terezín Memorial in cooperation with the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports of the Czech Republic and other domestic and foreign institutions. The first-level seminar will be held again in the spring of 2023.
Naděžda Seifertová
