WHEN THE CITY BECOMES A CLASSROOM, WHEN TEACHERS LEARN FROM EACH OTHER CENTROPA SUMMER ACADEMIES 3 BERLIN 2013 VIENNA & SARAJEVO 2014 Centropa does not speak only about the Holocaust. It is also about European history, about moral questions, about interfaith dialogue, about bringing us together. In Centropa there are no borders. Centropa creates an international family of educators. It connects you with other people and other countries. It creates bonds with other teachers who will help you discover different ways of thinking, of teaching, of approaching these issues. But the best thing is that Centropa doesn't teach you. Centropa helps you to discover by yourself European history and topics related to it. Centropa’s team, and the content they provide, helps you discover new and creative ways to teach the most difficult things. It is not a seminar where you sit on a chair, listen to facts, and try to memorize them. You become part of the seminar at every stage because you participate, discuss, write lesson plans, and then adapt them according to what your team members said. By working with other teachers, you change your way of teaching. Vassiliki Keramida Ministry of Education, Athens 4 CENTROPA SUMMER ACADEMY REPORT 2013 5 TABLE OF CONTENTS SUPPORTERS Claims Conference The Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany www.claimscon.org INTRODUCTION 6 Centropa Summer Academies 2007—2014 42 Vienna And The Modern Age CENTROPA SUMMER ACADEMY 2013, BERLIN 44 When History Has A Name, A Face, A Story 8 Berlin 46 Klimt, Schiele And Vienna 1900 10 Berlin: Greatness And Tragedy 48 The National Library And The Military Museum 12 When The City Becomes The Classroom 50 Speakers In Vienna 14 The Jewish Museum, The Holocaust Memorial 52 Interlude In Zagreb 16 Walking Jewish Berlin 54 Sarajevo 18 Our Speakers In Berlin 56 Walking Through History In A City With Open Scars 20 When Teachers Learn From Each Other 60 The Siege Of Sarajevo And La Benevolencija US Embassy Vienna 22 Teacher Presentations 62 Finding Common Ground In A War-Ravaged Land 25 Using Centropa In The Classroom 64 Our Speakers In Sarajevo Howard and Geraldine Polinger Family Foundation Jewish Museum Berlin Professional Educators of North Carolina Covenant Foundation Jewish Museum Vienna South Carolina Council on the Holocaust 28 Things To Improve 66 Teacher Presentations US Embassy Budapest Holocaust Fund Of The Jews From Macedonia Spanish Embassy, Sarajevo 34 Budget 68 Bringing What We Learned Back To The Classroom US Embassy Belgrade RZB - Raiffeisen Central Bank Austria German Embassy, Sarajevo US Embassy Skopje Duke University, Department of European Studies La Benevolencija, Sarajevo 34 The Team 2013 71 Things To Improve Ronald Lauder Foundation Austrian National Bank World Affairs Council of Charlotte CENTROPA SUMMER ACADEMY 2014, VIENNA & SARAJEVO 72 Centropa’s Educational Networks County of Charleston School Administration Austrian Federal Ministry for Europe, Integration and The Evangelical Church of the Rhineland County of Palm Beach Foreign Affairs 38 Vienna & Sarajevo 76 Budget Insight Foundation, Palm Beach North Carolina Center for the Advancement 40 Journey Through A Ruinous Century 76 The Team 2014 The Richard Russell Foundation, Miami of Teaching 6 CENTROPA SUMMER ACADEMY REPORT 2013 7 INTRODUCTION 90 2014 VIENNA CENTROPA SUMMER ACADEMIES 2007—2014 80 2013 SARAJEVO BERLIN Centropa’s first Summer Academy took place in 2007, when we brought nine teach- across the Atlantic. We had never heard of teachers from different countries and ers from American Jewish schools to Vienna and Budapest. There was never sup- different disciplines working together to create lesson plans they would concurrent- 90 85 TEACHERS posed to be a second one. The year before that we had been working in exactly no ly use in Los Angeles, Budapest, Baltimore, Vienna, and Boston, but it was happen- 70 TEACHERS schools, which means we had neither educational network nor a single educator on ing before our eyes. And this was a field we wished to till. 17 staff. But teachers had been coming to us ever since we launched centropa.org in 2012 COUNTRIES MANNHEIM 16 2002 and never stopped asking what sort of programs we offered them. Originally, In July 2008, we brought sixteen teachers from four countries to Berlin; and the next COUNTRIES 60 HEIDELBERG we told them: none. We only knew we had developed an unprecedented way of year twenty-four teachers from six countries visited Germany’s Mosel River Valley 2011 KRAKOW FRANKFURT capturing Jewish memory and that a hundred thousand unique visitors were coming with us. By 2010 the word was out, and we took sixty teachers from ten countries to 2010 VIENNA BERLIN to our website annually (that number is now a quarter million). the three great capitals of Habsburg Europe: Prague, Vienna and Budapest; then we PRAGUE SARAJEVO brought sixty-five teachers from twelve countries to Krakow, Vienna and Sarajevo. In 50 VIENNA 70 Teachers, like our general audience, were responding to the fact that these inter- 2012 we returned to Germany—to Frankfurt, Mannheim, Heidelberg and Berlin, where BUDAPEST 65 TEACHERS views, which did not use video but combined old family pictures with the stories seventy teachers from fourteen countries took part. This report details our summer TEACHERS that went with them—were about how Jews lived during the entire turbulent, tragic programs in Berlin in 2013, and Vienna and Sarajevo in 2014. 60 14 twentieth century—not only about how their families perished during the Holocaust. 40 TEACHERS 12 COUNTRIES They saw our database of Jewish memory as a very different sort of tool for human- Three hundred ninety teachers, education ministry officials, and museum educators COUNTRIES izing the lessons they were teaching. have taken part in our summer programs (including 2013 and 2014), and when a 10 COUNTRIES teacher like MJ Limbo from Ashboro, NC wrote us to say, "this summer you broad- 30 Since teachers were writing in and asking about adapting Centropa for classroom ened my mind, deepened my understanding, and changed my heart," then we use while offering ideas of their own, we assumed that they were the experts we understood that the field we have been tilling has been bearing fruit. needed to turn to, and invited nine American educators to Vienna and Budapest. 20 2009 The quid pro quo: you spend part of every day working around a table to help us Other organizations do an exemplary job of commemorating the destruction of FRANKFURT create programs you will use in your classroom—and then document students’ Jewish life during the Holocaust. Their video interviews concentrate on elderly Jews reactions to them—and we’ll spend part of every day introducing you to first rate recounting the horrors they endured; their trips to Central and Eastern Europe 24 historians, taking you to world class museums, and visiting the very sites where his- focus on concentration camps, ghettos, and death camps. 10 2008 TEACHERS BERLIN tory happened. 16 TEACHERS That isn’t us. We want teachers—accompanied by historians—to stroll down Vienna’s 2007 6 Our idea: to use the city as a classroom, and the entire eight days of that first sum- grand Ring Boulevard, where Sigmund Freud walked each afternoon to Café BUDAPEST COUNTRIES COUNTRIES mer program was built around adding to the teachers’ knowledge base, while at the Landtmann. They should traverse the narrow streets of Berlin Mitte while read- same time helping them develop a new set of skills based on that knowledge. ing Centropa interviews that took place there, and then arrive before the door of Just as important, we want teachers from different countries and disciplines to en- This report highlights our last two Summer Academies and we, the educational staff Regina Jonas, the first woman rabbi in the world. And we invite Bosnian and Israeli gage with top historians, share best practices with each other, and delve into digital at Centropa, hope you will enjoy reading through it. Naturally, if you have any ques- The most surprising thing we learned that summer was when we introduced our historians to guide them through the old Turkish alleyways of Sarajevo, where in storytelling. In other words, Centropa Summer Academies help educators build tions, feel free to contact us. Americans to a few Hungarian and Austrian teachers who stopped by to sit in on our 1894 a boy by the name of Kohen carried under his arm an old family heirloom, their knowledge base, turn that knowledge into skills, and then we track their prog- sessions. They not only bonded with each other immediately, they stayed in touch which would someday be known as the most famous Jewish book in the world, the ress as they bring those skills to their students on three continents—while creating during the school year to share ideas, ask questions, and even share lesson plans legendary Sarajevo Haggadah. cross-border projects with each other. 8 CENTROPA SUMMER ACADEMY REPORT 2013 9 CENTROPA SUMMER ACADEMY 2013 BERLIN 10 CENTROPA SUMMER ACADEMY REPORT 2013 11 CENTROPA SUMMER ACADEMY 2013 BERLIN: GREATNESS AND TRAGEDY It is a city where history is written both large and small; you find it when you look the Nobel Prize two decades later. In 1928, Kurt Weill performed The Threepenny up, it’s there at your feet. It’s in front of you as you stroll the avenues; it’s waiting Opera, and in that year, Elias Canetti, a Sephardic Jew living in Vienna and who around the corner. The Stolperstein, or stumbling block, pictured on the right says would win the Nobel Prize for literature in 1981, came to Berlin where he wrote it all. Gunter Demnig, a Cologne-based conceptual artist, created this project, about Weill and Brecht and their circle.