Debrecen: Teaching Jewish heritage in your class. Using Jewish cemeteries in education 2020

Debrecen: Teaching Jewish heritage in your class. Using Jewish cemeteries in education 2020

Centropa and ESJF (European Jewish Cemeteries Initiative) organized a joint two-day training seminar for 30 teachers from Croatia which took place from September 13-14, 2020 in Zagreb.

The Eastern part of Hungary was once famous for its large Jewish population, this is why for our educational seminar, we picked the central town of Eastern Hungary, Debrecen. The town is still the home of a small Jewish community, who have been the partners of this seminar by providing us venue, publicity, and hospitality. 31 teachers from 11 Hungarian towns have attended the seminar, and the highlights of the program were:

  • A visit in the Debrecen Jewish cemetery with guided tour;
  • Ceremonial opening of the Centropa travelling exhibition ‘Stories from a family album’ in the Debrecen orthodox synagogue;
  • A workshop of Jewish symbols and epitaphs, led by university professor and Jewish community member Zsolt Heller;
  • An introduction to Centropa films on Hungarian Jewish family stories, followed by presentations of veteran teachers of how they use these materials in class;
  • Groupwork of participants to develop lesson plans and project ideas of how they can integrate Jewish cemeteries into their teaching.

We want to thank our supporters at the European Commission for making this seminar possible.

You can find the program here.