These sessions are free to attend and open to anyone who has previously undertaken an introductory teacher training workshop, or other training, with the Holocaust Educational Trust.
- Unless otherwise stated, all sessions will take place on Zoom.
- You will need a computer with a camera and microphone to participate.
To sign up for any of the following seminars please click here (see below for further details):
Monday 20 January 2025 (16:30-18:00) – on Zoom
Evacuating the camps: The “Death Marches”
The term “Death Marches” refers to the forcible movement of prisoners (especially Jews) from the concentration and labour camps in the East to camps in Germany from the summer and autumn of 1944 onwards. Thousands died on these marches from cold, hunger and shootings by the guards. As the territories remaining under German control continued to diminish, prisoners were forced into an ever-smaller number of camps, causing horrific overcrowding and thus further starvation and epidemics of typhus and dysentery.
Understanding this phenomenon is crucial to understanding the conditions found by British and American liberators at concentration camps in Germany. In Bergen-Belsen, for example, which was liberated by the British in April 1945, tens of thousands of people died in the weeks prior to liberation.
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Lessons from Auschwitz CLPL for Teachers in Scotland
This programme is available as an online event taking place over two evenings on Zoom and is repeated as an in-person event taking place in Glasgow.
- Online: Wednesday 29 (16:30-18:30) and Thursday 30 January 2025 (16:30-18:30) – on Zoom
- In-person, Glasgow: Sunday 9 February 2025 (09:30-16:30)
Join us to explore how your school can engage in teaching about the Holocaust through the Scottish curriculum. By integrating teaching about the Holocaust holistically across our primary and secondary schools, we can ensure that all pupils have the skills to examine a defining moment in human history which raises fundamental questions about human identity, behaviour and ethics. By broadening our approach across schools, we also ensure that S5/6 students taking part in the Trust’s Lessons from Auschwitz Project have the prior knowledge to engage in advanced learning, and that teachers feel confident to support these students.
We welcome registrations of interest from teachers and trainees of all subject areas, currently in post or training across Scotland, particularly from schools who are engaged in the Lessons from Auschwitz Project. We welcome participation from more than one teacher from each school. Participants are required to be available for the whole of the in-person seminar, or both online sessions.
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Monday 10 (16:30-18:30) and Tuesday 11 February 2025 (16:30-18:30) – on Zoom
Teaching about the Holocaust in Wales
Join us to explore bilingual educational materials on the Holocaust, and refugee history in Wales, provided by the Holocaust Educational Trust as well as those of colleagues at the Centre for the Movement of People (CMOP) at Aberystwyth University.
During this session, we will direct teachers to resources - as well as organisations within Wales - which can support inclusion of Holocaust and refugee history within the Curriculum for Wales.
Speakers will include members of the Holocaust Educational Trust’s teacher training team; Dr Emily Smith from the Welsh Jewish Cultural Centre which is being created as part of the Merthyr Tydfil synagogue project; Alex Maws from The Association of Jewish Refugees, and Professor Andrea Hammel and Dr Morris Brodie from the Centre for the Movement of People (CMOP) at Aberystwyth University.
For further information, and a programme of events, please click here.
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Week commencing Monday 24 February 2025 – final date TBC - (09:30-16:30) – In-person, Merthyr Tydfil
Teaching about the Holocaust in Wales
Join us for a day exploring the pedagogy of teaching about the Holocaust in Wales, in partnership with the Welsh Jewish Cultural Centre, which is being created as part of the Merthyr Tydfil Synagogue project.
The new Welsh Jewish Cultural Centre will convey the life and contribution of the Welsh Jewish community. The Centre will tell the story of centuries of Jewish history within Wales, with exhibitions covering a myriad of subjects from Jewish culture and values to the Jewish calendar and life cycle.
The Centre will also look at Jewish relations with wider society and examine the impact of world events, including the Holocaust. Their aim is to preserve the stories of the past in order to play a meaningful role in society today.
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Sunday 9 March 2025 (10:00-12:00) – on Zoom
International Women's Day Lecture: Female humanitarian assistance to survivors
‘When we think of the liberation, we do not usually associate it with women. Indeed, popular images suggest that women did not play a significant role in the relief effort at all’. This quote, by historian Jo Reilly, about the liberation of Bergen-Belsen, still stands almost 30-years after it was written.
During this Teacher Study Seminar, we will explore the crucial role women played during the liberation of the concentration camps in 1945, from establishing emergency hospitals and nursing in the immediate days, to education and social work during the subsequent months as survivors sought to continue their lives.
The seminar will be led by Dr Jenny Carson, whose research explored the work of the Quaker Friends Relief Service following the liberation of Bergen-Belsen concentration camp.
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Monday 10 (16:30-18:30) and Monday 17 March 2025 (16:30-18:30) – on Zoom
The Holocaust beyond Auschwitz
Research suggests that whilst a majority of teachers explore Auschwitz-Birkenau in their classrooms, less than a third discuss Aktion Reinhard and the extermination camps of Treblinka, Bełżec or Sobibór. Over two twilight workshops, we will be joined by experts working to educate about these forgotten places of the Holocaust.
Speakers include:
- Monday 10 March: Tal Schwartz, ‘Grodzka Gate – NN Theatre’, a cultural institution based in Lublin; and Jolanta Laskowska, State Museum at Majdanek
- Tuesday 17 March: Steffen Hänschen, Bildungswerk Stanislaw Hantz
Aktion Reinhard was the largest killing operation of the Holocaust, in which at least 1.7 million mostly Polish Jews were murdered between March 1942 and November 1943 in the General Government region of German-occupied Poland. Coordinated from the city of Lublin, and carried out in the killing centres of Bełżec, Sobibór and Treblinka, as well as in countless massacre sites across the General Government, Aktion Reinhard raises challenging questions about how the Holocaust was perpetrated and witnessed and about how it has been remembered.
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Thursday 27 March (17:00-19:00) and Thursday 3 April 2025 (16:30 18:00) – on Zoom
Unveiling the Unexplored: Orthodox Jews in Poland during the Holocaust
Orthodox Jews suffered greatly during the Holocaust, yet their experiences have been inadequately studied by scholars. By examining diverse sources - including diaries, memoirs, letters, and photographs - we can shed light on previously unknown aspects of Orthodox Jewish life during the Holocaust. Moreover, by exploring themes - such as the early days of occupation, leadership dynamics, the experiences of Jewish youth, responses to adversity, and rescue efforts - we can advance the field of Holocaust studies as a whole.
In this session, Professor Havi Dreifuss will share her new research into the experiences of Orthodox Jews in German-occupied Poland and its impact on Holocaust studies. Havi Dreifuss is Professor of History in the Department of Jewish History at Tel Aviv University.
On Thursday 3 April, staff from the Trust, Dr Alasdair Richardson and Annabel Pattle will lead a workshop exploring how the Holocaust can be taught through the Philosophy, Religion and Ethics curriculum.
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Sunday 6 April 2025 (09:30-14:00) – on Zoom
Teaching through Testimony: Jewish Refugees to Britain
Join us to explore how we can bring the voices of Jewish refugees who came to Britain into our teaching. Speakers will include Bea Lewkowicz, Director of the AJR's Refugee Voices archive and Project Lead for Holocaust Testimony UK.
The Association of Jewish Refugees (AJR)’s Refugee Voices Testimony Archive, is a free online resource in the form of a collection of 280 filmed interviews with Jewish survivors and refugees from Nazi Europe who rebuilt their lives in Great Britain.
Holocaust Testimony UK is a partnership between the Association for Jewish Refugees and the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government. The site includes testimonies collected by organisations across the world. Teachers accessing the site can search by interviewee, experience, place of birth or location of interview, and can access most audio and video interviews directly from the platform.
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Monday 7 April 2025 (09:30-16:30) – on Zoom
Second Generation Voices in the Classroom
During this workshop, we will explore the place and importance of the voices of children (and grandchildren) of survivors in the classroom. Members of the Trust’s teacher training team will discuss history, terminology and curricular links, before we reflect on two different testimonies, shared by Yiftach Meiri (Yad Vashem’s International School for Holocaust Studies), and graphic novelist Michel Kichka (Bezalel Academy of Art and Design). Also joining us to speak about her latest project exploring Next Generation Voices will be Dr Bea Lewkowicz (The Association of Jewish Refugees).
Yiftach Meiri is the son of Hana Meiri, a Holocaust survivor born in Lvov in 1941. As a baby, Hana was smuggled out of the Lvov Ghetto and hidden by a Christian family. Too young to remember her biological parents, Hana took it upon herself to research her roots throughout her life and to search for other relatives who might have survived.
In 2012, Michel Kichka - graphic novelist and political cartoonist - published Deuxième Génération in which he explored his childhood in the shadow of his father (Henri Kichka)’s experiences as a survivor of the Holocaust. Published in English in 2016 as a digital edition, Second Generation: The Things I Didn't Tell My Father, provides an accessible text for use with secondary students exploring both the history and legacy of the Holocaust.
Dr Bea Lewkowicz is the daughter of Holocaust survivors Dr Gertrud Friedmann and Joseph Lewkowicz. Gertrud was born in 1929 in Piestany, Slovakia. She survived the war in hiding with her family. Joseph Lewkowicz survived six concentration camps. As part of her work with the Association of Jewish Refugees, Bea has most recently been working on the Next Generation Voices project, a collection of recorded messages which explore what being a descendant of a Holocaust survivor means to them.
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Wednesday 23 April 2025 (10:00-16:00) – In-person, Belfast
Teaching about the Holocaust in Northern Ireland
Join us to explore how your school can engage in teaching about the Holocaust through the Northern Irish curriculum. By integrating teaching about the Holocaust holistically across our primary and secondary schools, we can ensure that all pupils have the skills to examine a defining moment in human history which raises fundamental questions about human identity, behaviour and ethics.
In partnership with the Special Collections and Archives department at Queen’s University Belfast, this workshop aims to introduce teachers to local stories connected to Jewish Heritage in Northern Ireland. We will be joined by Dr Pamela Linden Aveyard, a Visiting Scholar at QUB's Centre for Public History, whose research explores the lives of Jewish refugees who escaped to Belfast during the 1930s.
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Sunday 4 May 2025 (14:00-19:00) – on Zoom
Teaching the history and culture of East European Jewry
To commemorate 100 years of the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, this workshop will discuss the history of the Institute and engage with educational resources exploring the history and culture of East European Jewry.
The seminar will begin with a workshop with Shlomit Steiner (Yad Vashem’s International School for Holocaust Studies), who will outline the history and importance of the YIVO.
Karolina Ziulkoski (Director of Digital, YIVO Institute for Jewish Research) will explore two free online interactive learning platforms available through the YIVO Bruce and Francesca Cernia Slovin Online Museum. These interactive exhibitions explore the lives of two children before and during the Holocaust: Beba Epstein: The Extraordinary Life of an Ordinary Girl and Yitskhok Rudashevski: A Teenager's Account of Life and Death in the Vilna Ghetto.
Ken Krimstein is a cartoonist, author, and educator whose work appears in The New Yorker, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, and The Chicago Tribune. His 2021 book, When I Grow Up - The Lost Autobiographies of Six Yiddish Teenagers explores six autobiographies written by Jewish youth for a contest organised by the YIVO in 1932. The graphic novel permits an incredible glimpse into a world which would be destroyed within a decade, following the Nazi invasion of Lithuania in 1941. The book has been named an NPR Best Book of the Year, a Washington Post Best Book of the Year and Top Ten Graphic Novel of 2021, and a Chicago Tribune Fall “Best Read”.
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Thursday 15 May 2025 (16:30-18:00) and Thursday 22 May (16:30-18:00) – on Zoom
Teaching about the occupation of Channel Islands
During the German occupation of the Channel Islands 1940–1945, many thousands of people were persecuted, including slave labourers, political prisoners and Jews. Their story, however, has been largely omitted from a British narrative of ‘standing alone’ against Nazism and celebrations of British victory over Germany.
Over two seminars, Professor Gilly Carr will explore the history of Nazi occupation and the stories of Channel Islanders who were deported to Nazi prison, concentration and labour camps. Alongside presenting an historical introduction, Gilly will introduce teachers to the resources of the Frank Falla Archive, including free educational resources for use in the classroom.
Professor Gilly Carr is Professor of Conflict Archaeology and Holocaust Heritage, Academic Director in Archaeology (Institute of Continuing Education, University of Cambridge).
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Sunday 15 June 2025 (09:30-14:00) – on Zoom
Liberation and Rebuilding Life
The liberation of the Nazi camps is an area that is often overlooked but this omits a valuable part of the story of the Holocaust and an interesting learning opportunity for students. Liberation is often perceived as a very positive experience for those who had survived the Holocaust. Yet, whilst this has elements of truth, such a view overlooks the sense of loss, disorientation, fear and numbness that many survivors felt and experienced.
Similarly, study of the Holocaust has also often ignored the experience of those who liberated the camps (both soldiers and relief workers). These individuals were totally unprepared for what they were faced with on their arrival in the camps and had no ready solutions for the issues facing those they liberated. This session, therefore, aims to challenge our understanding of the word liberation, and to explore the variety of impacts that liberation had on both the survivors and the liberators.
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To sign up for sessions in our Teacher Study Seminar series please click here