International Educational Conference 2025 Post-conference publication | Page 47

What challenges concerning memory can be singled out from the perspective of a memorial site and a museum?

Dr. Piotr Cywiński, director of the Auschwitz Memorial, took the polyphony of memory as the starting point for his reflection, stating that “we have to rethink the place of the memory in the education.” He emphasized that historical knowledge of the past is not the same as awareness and memory of the past and “in the curricula, we have only the historical knowledge that appears.” This posed a challenge as to how “to remember something really, not only to know some facts, but to have it as a living memory.” Dr. Cywiński also shared the observation that in the light of the questions he received during interviews and meetings, the focus was on the number of young people visiting the Auschwitz Memorial and the issue of Auschwitz Survivors passing away. He shared his reflection that this looked like a projection: “we project our vision of [keeping] the memory alive today on the teenagers or on the Survivors in order to protect ourselves from some difficult questions about our responsibility today."

How education can actually help us to strengthen memory?

“We live in a very fragmented world,” noted Nadav Neuman, the head of education in the Sapienship initiative, “and the educational landscape is no different.” He spoke of the return to the human fundamentals, a common ground between all human beings as the path forward. “When we supply educators with tools to teach history, or math, or the arts, we always go back to how this subject matter has to do with us being human beings,” he noted, considering it “a possibility for a shared human story that transcends the divisions.” He approached the issue from the perspective of storytelling, stressing the role of stories in shaping us as human beings.

The discussion with the participation of the audience concerned the issue of building social communities around diverse ideas, including the idea of Auschwitz remembrance, but also the idea of a flat Earth; the reflection whether the memory of wars and atrocities was stronger and more perpetuating than the memory of acts of solidarity; the role of technology in reinforcing the existing trends and introducing new opportunities as well as challenges in the field of memory.

How can memory be protected in the age of disinformation, distortion and other challenges? Who can protect this memory?

“We must foster a greater digital literacy among people,” observed Neuman, “the ability to distinguish between real and fake and knowing that not everything that we read or watch or listen to comes from credible sources.” Prof. Mannergren followed up with the digital dimension of memorial sites, noting that “we, as visitors to these sites and people engaging with these sites, move from the material, physical sites into the digital site,” so that memoryscapes in the global world got more complex. Dr. Cywiński spoke of the role of a memorial site as a place where historical facts are preserved and encountered by visitors. According to him, it is crucial “to help to build a relation between what you remember and your today's choices.” Trying to answer the second question, Dr. Bekele pointed to the state that has this responsibility. “But we don't leave it to a state alone,” he marked, “we just need to continue to build a community of people, either in a form of civil society, or independent institutions, or academia, or constantly interested citizens, to continue to be the guardians of these memories.”∎

Photo: (from the left) Dr. Daniel Bekele, Dr. Piotr Cywiński, Prof. Dr. Johanna Mannergren.