The youth of Europe against antisemitism Erasmus Project

Project Title

The youth of Europe against antisemitism

Project Key Action

This project related with these key action: Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices

Project Action Type

This project related with this action type : Strategic Partnerships for youth

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2016

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Intercultural/intergenerational education and (lifelong)learning; EU Citizenship, EU awareness and Democracy; Romas and/or other minorities

Project Summary

The project “The youth of Europe against antisemitism” looked into how antisemitism has developed after 1945 in Germany, Poland, and Latvia. For this purpose, the participants conducted about 60 interviews with about 70 people in Germany, Poland, and Latvia. Instead of selecting a representative sample of interviewees, we talked with people of as diverse backgrounds and perspectives as possible, namely regarding age, family background, socioecononomic status, political and religious conviction, degree of personal interest, and professional expertise about the topic of anti-semitism in Germany, Poland, and Latvia after 1945.
Most of the interviews were centred around the connection between history, politics, and anti-Semitism: In what ways is anti-Semitism connected to feelings of national collective guilt and responsibility with regards to the history of the Holocaust, but also to the feeling of being the victim in this historical process? How do the specific roles of the three countries in the Second World War as well as their political development after the war influence the forms that anti-Semitism takes? Can anti-Semitism be combated through raising awareness of history?
In the interviews, Jews spoke about their personal experiences with anti-Semitism, youth and nonagenarian Holocaust survivors alike, both laypeople and clerics. Also, there were interviews with scientists from a variety of disciplines, historians, sociologists, psychologists, and philosophers. They talked about their research in the fields of Jewish life in Germany, Poland, and Latvia after 1945, as well as anti-semitism, history politics, and popular historic narratives. In most of the interviews, we touched upon the question of how the discrimination against Jews and a negative or insufficient representation of Jewry in public and cultural life can be overcome. Among the interviews with professionals fighting antisemitism, a police officer talks about combating politically motivated crime, an educator about dispelling stereotypes about Jews already held by small children, and a volunteer about preserving the Jewish heritage of his town that is no longer home to any Jews. We visited the interviewees in their homes or places of work, namely in Auschwitz Memorial and Museum, Fürth, Forchheim, Ingolstadt, Kraków, Lublin, Nuremberg, Riga, Tel Aviv, Trier, Warsaw, and Zamość.
We, the collectors of the interviews, are a group of 29 people: high school and university students, apprentices, language teachers, and a historian from Aachen, Berlin, Fürth, Nuremberg, Munich, Riga and Zamość. Those from Germany and Latvia took part in the project as informal groups of youth, those from Poland as students and teachers of II Liceum Ogolnoksztalcace im. Marii Konopnickiej w Zamosciu.
All participants took part in preparing and conducting at least three interviews and transcribed and edited at least one.
Apart from conducting the interviews, we visited Jewish schools in Nuremberg and Riga, synagogues in Fürth, Kraków, Nuremberg, Riga, Warsaw, and Zamość, Jewish cemeteries in Fürth, Kraków, Riga, and Zamość, the Museums and Memorials at Auschwitz, Bełżec, and Majdanek, the Jewish Museum Franconia in Fürth, the Documentation Center Nazi Party Rally Grounds in Nuremberg, the Memorium Nuremberg Trials, the vapour bakehouse Schleifweg in Nuremberg, where members of the Jewish revenge group “Nakam” had in 1946 tried to poison the bread destined for SS officers awaiting their trial in a nearby prison, the Saint Sebald church in Nuremberg, which still has a medieval Judensau on its walls, the Museum Jews in Latvia, the Occupation Museum, former Riga Ghetto and Latvian Holocaust Museums, all in Riga, POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews in Warsaw, the “Grodzka Gate ‐ NN Theatre” Centre, and Galicia Jewish Museum in Kraków.
The main tangible result of our project is a book titled “When the refugees are gone, they’ll come after us” – Experiences with Anti-Semitism in Central Europe after 1945. The book assembles edited versions of the 25 most interesting interviews we conducted over the course of the project, together with an introduction and CV-style information about the interviewees. There is an e-book version and a condensed print version.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 54975 Eur

Project Coordinator

Rafael Schütz & Country: DE

Project Partners

• Judaica student group
• II Liceum Ogolnoksztalcace im. Marii Konopnickiej w Zamosciu