Centropa in Education
Preserving Jewish Memory
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Bringing History to Life
Centropa offers a web-based educational program designed for schools in Europe, North America and Israel. We encourage teachers to teach European-Jewish history in the 20th century in an interdisciplinary way, and we design our materials to be innovative, interactive and international.
International Teacher Training
Centropa's seminars for teachers began in the summer of 2007, when we invited nine US high school teachers to Vienna and Budapest to give us feedback on our website and Centropa's early films. Since then, our education programs have grown each year and we now conduct local workshops, national, and international seminars in the US, Europe and Israel, and each year we bring together 60-75 educators from approximately 15 countries for our annual Summer Academy in Central Europe.
Our programs are available in English, Hebrew, German, Czech, Slovak, Bulgarian, Hungarian, Polish, Lithuanian and Romanian.
Teachers use our materials to teach history, languages (German, English as a second language), language arts, ethics and values, Holocaust, 20th century Jewish history, film-making, and photography.
Interactive Student Projects
Our program is supplemented by an interactive project site where students can upload their own projects, comment on other school projects, and get in touch with each other. In our Border Jumping Community, you can find student projects from all over the world, documented through photos, videos, power point presentations, and texts.
Innovative Online Platform
Our educational program is based on the 1,200 interviews with Jewish Holocaust survivors and 22,000 of their family pictures that Centropa collected since 2000. We have then turned some of the most compelling biographies into short multi-media films that are being used in more than 500 schools in 20 countries. So far, we offer more than 30 short, biographical films about European-Jewish family stories, as well as 10 brief documentary films. All films are between 3 and 30 minutes long and can easily be used in various educational settings, such as public schools, Jewish schools, Jewish congregational schools, university classes, and adult education.
You will find all our films at www.centropa.org/centropa-cinema and you can download them free of charge.
All photos and biographies can be found at www.centropa.org/search-our-database-jewish-memory.
Our goals
Although we have somewhat different goals with each group of teachers, our three universal goals are to:
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connect us all to the lands of Jewish heritage by creating programs about the entire 20th century, not only about the period of the Third Reich
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use these programs in innovative ways so that Holocaust education will have relevance everywhere
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to combat antisemitism and Holocaust denial by creating programs that students carry out themselves, and share with other students across borders, oceans, and ethnic divides.
We are currently working in
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Public, charter, private and parochial schools throughout the United States, with a current special emphasis on schools in Florida, South Carolina, and North Carolina
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European public schools in: Austria, Germany, Lithuania, Poland, Czech Republic, Hungary, Romania, Serbia, Bosnia, Greece, North-Macedonia, Ukraine and Moldova
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Teacher trainers, curriculum writers, museum educators, as well as (US) city, county, and state school boards and (European) ministries of education
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Public schools throughout Israel
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Jewish middle and high schools throughout North America
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Jewish elementary and high schools in England, Finland, Sweden, Russia, Greece, Turkey, Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary, Czech Republic, Germany, Croatia
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Jewish supplemental schools and adult education courses in the United States
If you would like to have more information about our educational programs, please contact:
Fabian Rühle
Fabian Rühle is our European Education Director, developing materials and running seminars for teachers all over Europe. He is also our liaison for European governments and foundations, and he coordinates our fundraising in Europe. In 2015, he opened our Germany office and is now based in Hamburg.
+49 176 457 51975
ruehle(at)centropa.org
Dr. Lauren Granite
Dr. Lauren Granite directs our US educational programs. Since 2010 she has been building our network of Jewish day and congregational schools; expanding into public, parochial and charter schools; running workshops and seminars; mentoring teachers; writing lessons and projects; and establishing teacher advisory teams to advise us about Centropa curricula.
+1 301 787 0052
granite(at)centropa.org
Borbala Pál
Bori (Borbála) Pál is the head of our Budapest office, and she is the director of CJN – Centropa’s network of European Jewish schools. She is also responsible for our programs in Israel and in Hungary.
+3630 593 84 84
pal(at)centropa.org