Teaching the Holocaust and Helping New Generations Learn How to Live Together

The objective of the present project is to initiate a debate within Bulgarian society that would lead to further assessment of the Holocaust based on impartial reviewing of documents in Bulgaria and learning from Romania’s experience.

In pursuance of this goal the project aims at:

1) Research:

• reviewing school curricula and filling in the educational gaps, or “white spots”;
• assessing historical facts (collection of documents in the state archives in Bulgaria and good practices from Romania) on the saving of the Jews;
• researching the electronic media and the press with respect to the issue, and more specifically – the language used and the presence of hate speech;
• lessons learnt – the Holocaust, the name change of Bulgarian Turks in the late 1980s, anti-gypsism;

and

2) Remembrance: starting a series of public debates on the need of the introduction of Holocaust education as an example that would foster understanding and civic culture that would guard against any future perpetration of similar acts.