2000-2010: "Teaching the Holocaust in the schools of Romania"

Between 2000-2010, the Dr. Moshe Carmilly Institute for Hebrew and Jewish History Institute organised an annual teaching-training seminar titled “Teaching the Holocaust in the schools of Romania”. The participants were history teachers representing counties from across Romania, who were given lectures on how to teach the Holocaust in schools. Coordinated by Dr. Maria Radosav, Senior Lecturer, the seminar was organised by the Dr. Moshe Carmilly Institute for Hebrew and Jewish History in partnership with the Faculty of History and Philosophy of the Babeş-Bolyai University, the Institute of Oral History of the Babeş-Bolyai University, Yad Vashem – The International School for Holocaust Studies, Jerusalem, the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (Task Force for International Cooperation on Holocaust Education, Remembrance and Research), and the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington, D.C.

Each year, 30 history teachers from across Romania attended the seminar. The program included lectures on the history of the Jews, antisemitism, and the Holocaust, taught by lecturers from the Babeş-Bolyai University and by guest lecturers from Israel, France, and the United States. This programme also included courses on the methodology of teaching the Holocaust in schools, coordinated by experts from Yad Vashem – The International School for Holocaust Studies, Jerusalem, and the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (Task Force for International Cooperation on Holocaust Education, Remembrance and Research). The programme also included meetings with survivors of concentration camps, trips to memorial places connected to the Holocaust in Northern Transylvania and to the extermination camp of Auschwitz-Birkenau.

All of the history teachers who took part in the seminar prepared an individual project about teaching the Holocaust in schools, which they presented the following year to the new group of participants to the program. After presenting their own teaching project, the participants were awarded a certificate by the Babeş-Bolyai University, by which they became instructors specialised in teaching about the Holocaust in their respective counties.

This teaching-training seminar organised by the Dr. Moshe Carmilly Institute for Hebrew and Jewish history gained international reputation due to its didactic, formative and scientific value, and was classified by international experts as the third best programme of its kind, after those organised by Yad Vashem – The International School for Holocaust Studies, Jerusalem, and the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington, D.C.

Click here to view the art projects created by the pupils involved in this programme