Euroasian Jewish News

Letter of Director of the Center for Holocaust Studies to EAJC President

To EAJC President

Mikhail Mirilashvili

Dear Mikhail!

The Ukrainian Center for Holocaust Studies (UCHS) has had a very fruitful cooperation with the Euro-Asian Jewish Congress as part of the Congress’ successful educational program “Lessons of the Holocaust.” As part of this program, approximately two thousand teachers and several thousand students from nine EAJC countries have participated in the program. The UCHS is an EAJC partner in key aspects of the “Lessons of the Holocaust” program, such as holding an annusal school and seminar for history teachers, holding the annual I.B. Medvinsky competition “History and Lessons of the Holocaust”, which rates students’ research and creative works, and organizing research and methodological internships for teachers in Jerusalem, at the Yad Vashem memorial. The UCHS provides a substantial part of the following program elements: the preparation of readers, course programs, and literature. The aim of the program is to preserve the memory of Shoah victims by teaching the younger generation about the Holocaust as, first and foremost, part of the history of the Jewish people, and also as part of the history of those countries where the Holocaust took place. We also show the history of the Holocaust in the context of historical events of the prior century and compare it with other 20th century genocides. It is hard to overrate the importance of this program. Thanks to the knowledge received at our methodological and educational schools and seminars, at our competitions, at our Yad Vashem internships, the teachers of history who participate in our program can pass their knowledge on to their students and also work with their local Jewish communities, conserve memorials and help lower the level of xenophobia and antisemitism in society.

The UCHS and the Congress are not the only ones supporting these projects. The school competitions, the summer school for teachers, the teachers’ internships at Yad Vashem, are also regularly supported by the Embassy of the State of Israel in Ukraine, and also by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA). However, EAJC help allows us to implement all of these projects internationally. Thanks to the aid of the Congress, the teachers, students, and other pupils who participate in “Lessons of the Holocaust” come not only from Ukraine, but also from Georgia, Moldova, Kyrgyzstan, and Belarus. Thus, without EAJC help this program becomes realistically unviable and inevitably loses its international aspect, which is so important for the development and the creation of mutual links between Jewish communities in Eurasian space. These projects were presented to the EAJC Program Commission and approved at a Commission meeting in 2017.

I am absolutely certain of your support of these incredibly important educational projects, as teaching the history of the Holocaust is one of the most important forms of preserving the memory of Shoah victims, and is thus one of the most important aspects of Jewish education in itself.

Respectfully,

Dr. Anatoliy Podolsky

Director of the Ukrainian Center for Holocaust Studies, Kyiv