Memoria [EN] No. 16 (01/2019) | Page 24

The video account project consists of a book entitled “Interactions. Explorations of Good Practice in Educational Work with Videotaped Testimonies of Victims of National Socialism” and an educational App for smartphones.

The book is the result of a conference held in 2017, in Vienna. It is the fourth volume of a series of publications entitled “Education with Testimonies”. The new volume includes a review of various concepts and examples from several countries of the world on the use of video accounts in school education. It also presents similar experiences applied in museums and memorials. A complement to the book is the German educational App titled “Fliehen vor dem Holocaust. Meine Begegnung mit Geflüchteten” (Fleeing the Holocaust. My encounter with refugees). It provides the possibility to “meet” with a survivor who attempted to escape persecution in Austria. The history of the witness has been linked to documents from the era and, is for use both in independent and classroom learning. The App was developed in 2017, as part of the Swiss IHRA presidency. For now, it is only available in the German version, but will eventually be available in French. The presentation of the book and mobile App aroused great interest and discussion on the of use of mobile devices in education about the Holocaust.

Another example of good educational practice was the travelling exhibition titled “Auschwitz Not so long ago, not so far away”. A similar presentation was shown to experts of the museums and memorials group at the May session of the IHRA in Rome. The exhibition began its international trip in December 2017 from Madrid, where it recorded considerable attendance - it was visited by half a million residents of the Spanish capital and the surrounding area, including numerous groups of school children. The exhibition was created thanks to the cooperation of the Spanish company - Musealia with several experts and institutions. The Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum was a significant partner of the project, both in the scope of the curatorial exhibition and the lending of items from the museum collections.