“WHO WERE THE VICTIMS
OF THE NATIONAL SOCIALISTS?”
This is a Toolkit on “Who Were the Victims of the National Socialists?” that invites you, students, to explore the history of different groups of people persecuted by the National Socialists. In this journey, you will create your own local history project together with your peers. In the process, you will discover what ignites your curiosity and what stories you wish to unearth and share within your own community.
Euroclio
Why do we need another educational resource on the history of National Socialism and World War II? Throughout Europe, the history of World War II is largely covered by history curricula across different levels and years of study.
However, educators and students do not always have the opportunity to explore aspects that are connected to their own neighbourhood, town, city or region. These include the diverse ways in which individuals and communities experienced events in their historical contexts, as well as the changing interpretations of these narratives over time. This Toolkit aims to provide teachers and students with tools, information and additional resources to expand their understanding of various groups of people who were persecuted by the National Socialists. Some of these histories have remained untold, understudied, or are simply lesser-known. With a broader Focus on Nazi persecution, we aim to illuminate the stories of the diverse groups of people that have been underrepresented in research, remembrance culture and history lessons. Therefore, the central inquiry question of this Toolkit and the local history projects is: Who Were the Victims of the National Socialists?
By looking at the past, the Toolkit and the local history projects aspire to develop an understanding of mechanisms and structures in present-day societies that give rise to injustice. We challenge students to increase their awareness and comprehension of racism, discrimination, and other forms of social exclusion in our societies today.
The topic at hand is a complex one. “Victim” is in itself a term that needs to be reflected upon critically. One needs to be aware of the complexity and importance of deconstructing discriminatory categories in an educational setting: in this case, when referring to the categories of victims that were created and used by the National Socialists. To avoid reproducing discrimination, we use the more nuanced terms we have today to refer to different victim groups, rather than those created and used by the perpetrators in their historical context.
Discussing a violent past and the suffering of people can also be very emotionally challenging for both teachers and students. We therefore invite you, teachers, to tackle this project and topic in a way that allows you and your students to find a balance between understanding its complexity on the one hand, and exploring concreto examples to connect with and make history more tangible on the other.
The Toolkit provides basic historical content and information about the ideology of National Socialism and its different victims. It also offers practical tools that you and your students may wish to use when creating a local historymproject.
Through the examples of our teams, the Toolkit provides ideas for different ways local history projects can be conceptualised, what students can create, how the outcomes of the projects can be presented, and how a local project can connect to broader learning objectives following the Council of Europe’s Reference Framework of Competences for Democratic Culture, also known as the Butterfly Model. In addition to what the students of our five pilot countries have already created, the outputs of your students will contribute to a larger European culture of remembrance.
The Toolkit contains:
• Step-by-step guidance on how to create a local history project, including examples piloted by our teams from Belgium, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Denmark, Slovakia and Spain.
• Information sheets with historical background on different groups persecuted by National Socialism.
• Guidance on how to conduct interviews and analyse images.
• A glossary, timeline and map.
• Lists with additional resources (websites, archives, documentaries, books and articles) to help you with your research for your local history project.
This Toolkit was developed within the framework of “Who Were the Victims of the National Socialists?”, a project of the Education Agenda NS Injustice funded by the Foundation Remembrance, Responsibility and Future (EVZ Foundation), and coordinated by EuroClio and the Max Mannheimer Study Centre.