Who Were the Victims of the National Socialists?

The Basic Law of the Federal Republic of Germany and other European countries prohibits treating people differently on the basis of their gender, religious beliefs or physical condition, among other things. However, the reality is different: Every day in Europe, there are people who suffer from racism, LGBTIQ+ hostility, anti-Semitism, antiziganism, discrimination and xenophobia. The best chance of realising a future that lives up to the promise of democracy and human rights is education.

“Who Were the Victims of the National Socialists?” is a project that focuses on imparting historical knowledge about National Socialist injustice, persecution and extermination. Young people from Europe are to be encouraged through this pilot project to gain a deeper understanding of the roots of discrimination in the present by researching the victims of the National Socialists in the past. In addition, the project also aims to broaden the general historical understanding of and raise awareness for a variety of groups that were persecuted by the National Socialists.
An international team of history and museum educators, teachers and pupils have developed history projects centred around the key question “Who Were the Victims of the National Socialists?”. The pilot project is organised in cooperation with EuroClio – European Association of History Educators and the Max Mannheimer Study Centre (MMSZ) and is supported by the Foundation Remembrance, Responsibility, Future (EVZ).

The unique thing about this project on learning about the past is that the students are responsible for their own learning journey. They can decide for themselves how they want to learn about the past and how they want to explore this question. The teacher is merely a facilitator in this process. The toolkit encourages students to think about what they want to learn, what they want to know about this topic and how they want to and can find out. The toolkit consists of a larger competency-based framework that allows both students and teachers to track and assess the development of core democratic awareness, skills and competencies, also by asking students to think and reflect on social injustice in today’s society.