The MemAct! project is a partnership of the Galicia Jewish Museum (Poland), Terraforming South (Serbia), EDAH o.z.(Slovakia), Miteinander e.V. (Germany) and Hartheim Castle, Pädagogische Hochschule Oberösterreich , Museums of the City of Linz (Austria).
Galicia Jewish Museum (Poland)
The Galicia Jewish Museum exists to commemorate the victims of the Holocaust and celebrate the Jewish culture of Polish Galicia, presenting Jewish history from a new perspective and provides an innovative and unique institution located in Kazimierz, the former Jewish district of Kraków. The objectives of the museum are to challenge the stereotypes and misconceptions typically associated with the Jewish past in Poland and to educate both Poles and Jews about their own histories, whilst encouraging them to think about the future. The museum’s cultural and educational program is one of the most extensive in Poland, providing a range of services for both individual and group visitors. The educational team developed specific communicative methods that seek to challenge visitors’ perspectives. The educators of the museum are in a permanent reflective process regarding their pedagogical approach.
Role within the project
For Galicia Jewish Museum, education assistant Bartosz Duszyński will participate in work package #3 together with the NGO Edah, the educational team of the museums of the city of Linz and the commemoration site Hartheim Castle. Their task in work package #3 is to provide insight in the workshop method “Choices Faced, Decisions Made: The Holocaust and Wartime Morality”. This workshop deals with the scope of choices and responsibilities people faced in Nazi time. The GJM educational team will invite young students and the MemAct! consortium to experience and analyse the workshop. The result on this workshop evaluation will lead to guidelines for addressing the ethics of responsibility and civic participation in the Nazi system and inform methods that will be available in the Open Access Online Tool-box.
Terraforming (Serbia)
Terraforming is an independent non-governmental and non-profit organisation from Novi Sad in Serbia founded in 2008, and with partners, contributors, associates and project activities all across Europe. Terraforming develops educational methodologies and teaching materials, combining best practices in contemporary pedagogy with new-media technologies while facilitating multidisciplinary cross-sectoral international project cooperation and exchange.
Terraforming promotes human rights, diversity and tolerance, combating discrimination, intolerance, antisemitism, antiziganism and all forms of xenophobia, while debunking bias, myths, prejudice and stereotypes. Terraforming designs training programs, facilitates international exchange of experiences and best practices, and produces various public outreach activities with aim to empower multipliers such as teachers, librarians, archivists, museum workers, NGO activists, and to inform local communities, decision and policy makers, as well as other stakeholders.
Terraforming intends to share these experiences with the MemAct! team through participating at all the activities, activating participants in Belgrad and developing new educational material.
Role within the project
Terraforming founders Nevena Bajalica and Miško Stanišić will be active in work package #1 to develop a model of teaching the Holocaust based on a shared history of Austria and the Balkan, joining forces with Prof. Claudia Fahrenwald and her team of the University of Education Upper Austria Terraforming is also responsible for work package # 2: They will engage youngsters in Belgrade to develop an idea of how to build a commemoration site which connects the neglected place of the concentration camp “Judenlager Semlin” at Sajmište with the general urban surroundings of Belgrade. Terraforming will contribute both guidelines and methods of how to include young people in remembrance policies to be included in the Open Access Online Toolkit.
EDAH o.z. (Slovakia)
The NGO Edah develops educational films with Holocaust related testimonies in the Slovak region and invites young students to workshops with this material. In this context the educators also discuss the role of the Slovak civic society and the history of traditionally embedded anti-Semitism. Many workshops take place in collaboration with the Sereď Holocaust Museum, which was created on the site of the former labour and concentration camp in Sereď. The context for the workshops is the museum’s educational centre for events, seminars, and courses that focuses on educating and informing the public about Jewish culture and the impact of the Holocaust on the life of Jews in Slovakia.
Role within the project
The NGO Edah, represented by Matěj Beránek, will join forces with the commemoration site Hartheim and the education department of the museums of the city of Linz to further develop methods dealing with civic responsibility in the context of work package #3. Here they contribute their specific workshop method that is built on filmed testimonials of the Holocaust. Edah will invite the MemAct! team to their working context in Slovakia to observe a workshop with young students working with their material. Based on the joint analyses work package #3 will develop further ideas of how to include oral history in educational work which addresses the ethics of responsibility and civic participation in the Nazi system and inform methods that will be available in the Open Access Online Toolkit.
Miteinander – Netzwerk für Demokratie und Weltoffenheit in Sachsen-Anhalt e.V.
Founded in 1999 the NGO Miteinander e.V. is engaged in strengthening democracy in Germany. Miteinander is committed to an open, pluralistic, and democratic society and works against racism, anti-Semitism, and other forms of discrimination against people (group-focused enmity). The association conducts educational and community work, mediation, and network building to foster civic engagement and knowledge. Within its work, Miteinander combines different fields of activity to counter right wing extremism and to strengthen civic society:
- analysis and monitoring of right-wing extremism
- support and counselling for victims of hate crime
- counselling and advice for communities and their representatives
- youth and adult education
- de-radicalization trainings
Role within the project
Miteinander e.V., represented by director Pascal Begrich, takes care to connect the approach of support and community counselling concerning current anti-Semitism and Racism with learning about the Holocaust. Through this connection MemAct! will be able to head towards an approach of civic education in learning about the Holocaust. Doing so, they will contribute insights from its own community work and research about racism. Miteinander e.V. will connect the development group with the main stakeholder groups in this context and disseminate the MemAct! activities amongst those groups and their clients. It will be responsible for work package #4 focusing on the connection of the past with the present. Miteinander e.V. will also be responsible to conduct the final conference (together with the development group) in Saxony-Anhalt so that the MemAct! results will impact this region.
Verein Schloss Hartheim (Hartheim Castle Society)
Hartheim Castle, a home for mentally and physically disabled people from 1898 to 1940, was transformed into a killing centre of the Nazi “euthanasia” programme. Around 30.000 mentally and physically handicapped people as well as prisoners of concentration camps were murdered in Hartheim castle. In 2003 “Hartheim Castle – Place for Learning and Remembrance” was opened. It is a place of commemoration and remembrance, of documentation and learning with high educational standards. The Hartheim educational department is currently developing new, participatory methods to activate the neighborhoods. The legal sponsor of the memorial and the exhibition is the Hartheim Castle Society.
Role within the project
Hartheim will build its MemAct! contribution on the experiences of the last three years intense development of new learning methods dealing with civic responsibility. In work package #2 Hartheim’s team, represented by education head Irene Zauner-Leitner and director Florian Schwanninger, will advise the participatory practices and contribute experiences from working with the community that lives close to the former killing site.
In the context of work package #3 Hartheim will include artist Tal Adler and his photography based project “Voluntary Participation” to conduct a participatory art project. In the context of work package #3 Hartheim will invite one school-class to test one of the newly developed methods and to analyze the experiences together with other work package #3 members. The team will also develop the formats of how to use oral history as a learning tool. These formats will be shared through the Online Toolkit.
University of education Upper Austria – PH OÖ
The direct partner at the University of Education Upper Austria is Prof. Dr. Claudia Fahrenwald. She is a professor for Organisational Education with a focus on School Development. She is head of CEDI – Civic Education International, a research unit for civic education. Her research focus includes Community Based Learning / Community Based Research, narration, leadership and gender studies as well as civic engagement approaches. Over the last years she was part of several EU funded projects on civic education. Currently she is involved in a research project “Service Learning. Living Democracy in Schools – participating in Society”. Furthermore she is engaged in a cooperation on “Civic Engagement Education“ with the School of Education at the University of Pittsburgh (USA).
Role within the project
Prof. Claudia Fahrenwald will support MemAct! with insights on the state of the art in research and quality standards for Civic Engagement Education, Participatory Approaches to Cultural Heritage Education and post-colonial approaches to Museum Pedagogy, and she will provide her expertise to the MemAct! discussions. Doing so, she will contribute these insights to the Toolkit and during the conferences. She will also contribute to the methodological evaluation process towards an Engaged Civic Education approach and will help to shape the analyses and the methods to be developed out of the evaluation conclusions. She will further embed MemAct! in her broad international network in civic education and research and include these network partners in MemAct! activities. She will contribute to the work package #1 development of the prototype of a Holocaust lesson model that follows the engaged civic learning approach. She will test this model at her university.
Museums of the City of Linz
With their different institutions – the Lentos art museum, the Nordico City Museum and the Valie Export Center Linz – the museums of the City of Linz are among the city’s most potent cultural driving forces and see themselves as meeting places designed for dialogue. They are committed above all to an open access to art and culture. Especially the City Museum Nordico provides insights in the NS time in Linz through specific objects and stories. The educational department of these museums also seeks to establish the museum as a space of shared knowledge production and storytelling.
Role within the project
The education sector of the Museums of the City of Linz, with head of education Karin Schneider as responsible coordinator. This partner hosts and leads the coordinating team of MemAct! which includes the development group of the project, Paul Salmons, Wolfgang Schmutz and Karin Schneider, and the project manager Gisela Hagmair. They manage communication, the development and dissemination process and take care that the work packages meet their tasks and provide meaningful results for the Open Access Online toolkit. Drawing on experiences in the context of the two exhibitions “New Nationalism” (Lentos art museum) and “Young Hitler” (Nordico city museum), members of the museum’s educational team will engage in work package #2, 3, and 4 and will provide new methodological approaches for the museum and the toolkit.