“Contributing to a shared European historical consciousness”

“Facts not Fiction” targets youths across Europe who are involved in local history projects focusing on the victims of National Socialist persecution. Which expectations and hopes do you derive from the Europe-wide approach?

Andreas Holtberget

As a rule of thumb, we tend to only work in transnational teams. We see a lot of added value in working Europe wide. Through our research activities, we have found that teachers across Europe express very similar concerns on how to engage their students in learning processes, how to attract their interest and attention, how to discuss sensitive and contested issues and events of the past, and how to connect past and present. They also share concerns on how the lack of resources and training makes it difficult to adopt student-centered and active methodologies where students can learn the profession of an historian, and the lack of resources to teach and learn about the history of local minority groups, like Roma and Sinti and the LGTBQIA+ community, for instance. Our expectation is of course that our project will help address these concerns. At the same time, doing this across several European countries can of course also provide some additional motivation for the students involved. Some of them got to travel to our Annual Conference in Bratislava earlier this year. There, they got to meet, exchange and learn with their peers doing similar projects elsewhere.

Another hope I have is that the very local approach will counter misconceptions such as “only Jews were persecuted,” and focus on how multiple victimised groups (Roma, disabled people, minorities) can be highlighted as well. Similarly, my hope is that the local approach will mean that we get results highlighting very personal stories. I think this is really crucial – to emphasize that the victims of Nazi persecution were individual human beings like you and me, and not an impersonal mass like “the Jews” or “the Roma”.

Finally, the Europe‑wide structure enables youth in different countries to share, compare, and contrast local histories, perhaps seeing connections that go beyond national narratives typically employed in history teaching.

Where are the local projects based and how different is their starting situation in the countries?

The local projects are being done at two different locations in Germany, across several in Romania, in Serbia and in Finland. To start with, these countries obviously experienced World War II very differently. I can imagine that it was less ‘obvious’ for the Finnish team to know where to start. Of course, we know that new research has bought forward new knowledge on that country’s history with the Holocaust and as I mentioned earlier we are certainly looking at a shared European past. Having said that, with these different experiences, and crucially memories, of WWII, I also see that the teams in a sense start from very uneven levels when it comes to issues such as access to archives and perhaps also public awareness. It is, in other words, a good way to test if our methodology works across different contexts! 

In which way will the findings be made accessible?

The students are doing really amazing work sharing their research in different formats. Some will be presented with mini museum exhibits, others will do podcasts and heritage tours. Some are even creating graphic novels and so far, what we have seen has been truly impressive!

A Europe-wide youth council is planned to be formed as part of the project. What is this about and which expectations do you derive from it?

We hope that all the students who’ve been involved in the project across all these different countries will join the online youth council, to share about their work and ensure that the students’ own voices are heard by the project team. In addition to that, we’re very fortunate to be able to count on the experience of one of our project advisors, Aaron Peterer. He’s a brilliant youth educator and as part of the Youth Council, he will coordinate online 3D virtual tours of the Anne Frank House. Stay tuned for announcements on that – it’s open to youth anywhere and not limited to those who took part in the project itself.