28th Senior High School of Thessaloniki, Greece
Summary on the seminars
Motivated by the topic of our project, teachers of our school attended two seminars about teaching Holocaust in Greece.
The first one (11-12 December) was organized by the Jewish Museum of Greece and the Jewish Museum of Thessaloniki, while the second one (19-21 December) was held by the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki. The aim of both seminars was to propose effective methods of communicating such a difficult subject as Holocaust. Apart from an overview of the history of Jewish presence in Thessaloniki and their annihilation during the WWII, the seminar speakers focused on the education methodology: According to this methodology the teacher should not only trigger deep emotional reactions and empathy of the students but also try to develop political awareness. The ultimate educational goal should be to form active and responsible citizens, able to recognize and resist to totalitarian ideologies with the hope that such a dark age of human history will never be repeated.
During the two seminars various educational tools were proposed, covering a large range of mediums: films, (documentaries and movies) testimony videos, photographs, products of art such as paintings, songs, works of literature etc. Teachers should make a careful choice according to the age of their pupils and their specific aim, keeping in mind that much of what occurred during the Holocaust seems too horrible to imagine.
Taking into account that Holocaust education does not consist part of Greek curriculum and there are only short references in History text books, these seminars were valuable for us in order to integrate suitable activities to the Erasmus project. Two teachers (Zaharias Spanos and Theodora Glaraki) participated to the first seminar and 5 teachers (Anna Doiranli,, Despina Demiri, Lia Lefaki, Magda Mintsiori and Theodora Glaraki)to the second one.
More information about the second seminar in the following links:
Theodora Glaraki
