Learning from history — experience of totalitarian regimes of the 20th century

Since 1998, unemployed youth have been researching Jewish history in their home town of Freiberg and neighboring Czech cities as part of a job qualification program to become “specialists for information and media services”. Besides working in archives and meeting eyewitnesses, they also tend and document Jewish cemeteries in Saxony and North Bohemia. Project derived from partner website “Lernen aus der Geschichte”.

The point of departure for the search of to students for traces in local history was the “Memorial of the Broken Hearts”, commemorating the so-called detention camp for Polish juveniles, where the SS had imprisoned Polish youths under inhumane conditions. The topic of the competition was “The Most Important Event in the History of My Home Town. Witnesses and Testimonies”. The project presented here was carried out by two secondary school students. They collected reports of contemporary witnesses and carried out research work in the library. The write-up of their work and research findings was handed in as a contribution towards the competition.

Together with professional actors from the Municipal Theater of Chemnitz, enthusiastic students from the Dr.-Wilhelm-André-Gymnasium rehearsed the play “Dr. Korczak – The Last Journey” by the Japanese author, Fumikatsu Inoue. Korczak, a physician and teacher, was director of an orphanage and died along with 200 of his orphans at Treblinka in 1942. The performance has been a great success in Germany, Italy and Switzerland. Project derived from partner website “Lernen aus der Geschichte”.