 Ladies and gentlemen, can you hear me well? Good morning to this panel devoted to explaining different case studies of projects on solidarity. My name is Constanze Itzel. I have the huge responsibility to be director of the House of European History in Brussels that some of you might know. When I saw the map outside of this room where we are asked where we come from, I didn't know what to put because we could put the origins of my family from Prague or from Silesia. We could put where I was raised in Bavaria or my home, my current hometown, which is Brussels. So this is just to frame this panel because some of my panelists also share this diverse origin in their biography and we will also try to have a European and transnational approach in this panel. This morning we've heard a lot about the political use of memory, the political use of memory that can be used not only to reconcile but also to divide and to make nationalistic or imperialistic claims. And now I would say that we, on this background of describing this political use of memory, we are moving now to the civil society movements and to different, to panelists from different disciplines who are trying to build solidarity by different means. And this panel has several challenges. The most practical of which I would say that those of you who don't have Spanish by your rhythm might get hungry during the time of this panel. I hope that you will stick with us until 1.30. The more practical challenge in the moderation is that we have five panelists and from very diverse backgrounds and from very diverse disciplines. So very typical for a European panel, for a European topic. In order to bridge a little bit the diversity that we are dealing with, I've thought about how to create some links between the topics we are going to speak about and first I'd like to mention once more, well, the theme of the panel, solidarity. Yesterday and this morning we've heard many different definitions of this word, solidarity with a big S and a small S, we were told this morning, solidarity as a foundation, the foundation that hosts us here and thank you very much for this, solidarity as a very important historical movement and many different meanings of the word in different languages that are represented here in the room. But one thing that I would like to pick up on from yesterday is the definition of Raphael Rogulski who told us that ethnologically speaking, etymologically speaking, sorry, false friend, the word can come from bond, can mean a bond. And so first of all, I would like to thank the two networks that host us here because bringing these two networks, Eurom and ENRS together here does already mean weaving new bonds and I will try to do my best also to try and weave some bonds between the panelists here because they are really a diverse in origin and hopefully also between the panelists and the audience. So in terms of how we will proceed, it's a bit like the panel this morning, five-minute presentations by all the projects that are represented here. Then I have some follow-up questions and then we will open the discussion with the audience. And for the order of appearance, I think this morning it was alphabetical. This time I will ask you to figure, to imagine a member of Europe and we will go, we will move from east to west. Although as I said, most projects have a very transnational and European way of looking at things and also cross-border ways of representing solidarity. So we will embark on a journey from Ukraine with Bogdana, who you see in the middle. I will introduce the panelists later a bit more specifically. To Poland, Ukraine with Maciej, then up to Finland with Erky, to Spain with some Romanian origins with Luisa and Luisa will speak in Spanish, so have your headphones ready if you need them. And finally to Strasbourg with a very pan-European outlook with Finn. And all projects we will discover have a cross-border, transnational or even pan-European perspective. And so I hope that we can complement the paradigms of this morning's panel because this morning's panel, I don't know if you realized, they were very much made up of the case of Spain and in the case of Romania and in the case of Hungary, etc., which is normal because history is perceived like this. But today here we will try to look a bit more into the cross-border interactions and transnational links of creating solidarity and cooperation. This order of appearance also means that we will move through different academic disciplines or different ways and means of creating solidarity. We will start with projects based on literature and literature translation. We will discover the important work historians are doing for reconciliation and finally also humanitarian aid and education and history teaching and some other means like exhibitions. So I would like to embark you now on this journey through different disciplines, different ways and the two questions I will put to the panelists are very simple. The what and the how, what are you doing, what does solidarity mean for you and by which means do you think can solidarity be built and how can we learn from you, what works, what doesn't work. So how do your projects foster cooperation, solidarity, mutual understanding and also hopefully reconciliation. So I will start with Bogdana. Bogdana who is in the center of the table. Bogdana Brilanska is a cultural manager and she has worked for with city councils, creative programs. After graduating in 2009 with an MA from the Ivan Franco National University of Liv, she co-authored this city's application for the title of UNESCO City of Literature as well as the city's cultural strategy up until 2025. And obviously she operates in a very tense context now in a very difficult context that we are curious to hear about where solidarity suddenly takes on a very different and very serious meaning. So Bogdana I would like to ask you to introduce your projects for five minutes please. I just wanted to ask first is there possible to show the PDF that I sent or no, to be prepared. I will start just to say for people who don't know what is the UNESCO City of Literature title. It's title that connects cities to the network of the cities of literature. Now we have almost 42 cities all over the world and I want to start with that to explain that from the beginning we started to work in the meaning of the network in general. We the city of literatures are the network that is working with the literature, with the freedom of speech and also with the translation. For the cities of literature when the war started in Ukraine it was a bit also difficult to talk about this because to our network there are two like there is leave in this network at the same year. There was a city from Russia who got the title also the city of literature. But when the war started there was a lot of communication how do we communicate and what do we do in the network and how we explain and how we show the solidarity in this network. In general it's very hard to work in culture now in Ukraine. Yes you can imagine. You are not only doing the culture projects. You need to think what these culture projects are talking about the war in Ukraine and what they are talking about the Ukrainian history in the meaning of what is happening now. And every journey that I am taking from the beginning of the war is a journey from home to somewhere where I am not safe in the meaning of the language, in the meaning of the stories that I should tell and the meaning of the reaction that I will get from the stories. Last year when our office started to work on the projects and started to speak about what is happening in Ukraine it was hard for us to find the language and the stories that we need to tell. And we started the first thing that we did. We did the video with the English explanation of the history of the literature of Ukrainian literature in Ukraine. How we lost a lot of poise during the whole time that we were colonised by the Russian Empire and how we lost our language a few times and how we are regaining it for the last 30 years that we are an independent state. And we were talking about the people, about their remembrance, about the famous Ukrainian poets. For us, maybe you will not know these names but it was about Rachevchenko. He is the most famous one. It was about Lesa Ukrainka and it was about Vasyl Stus. All these three poets were living in the times when there was no Ukraine in the meaning of the independent state. But they were Ukrainians and they were speaking Ukrainian language and they were writing about the Ukraine as an independent state. And Rachevchenko, he was bought out from Kripatstvo. It's the form of the slavery that was in the Ukrainian territory led by the Russian Imperium. Lesa Ukrainka, she was the woman and she was the Ukrainian author at the same time and she was the beginner of the feminist movement in Ukraine. Vasyl Stus, he was the Ukrainian poet at the beginning of the 60s in Ukraine when there was a totalitarian regime in Ukraine made by the USSR. But you need to understand that at that time you could speak Ukrainian and be published in Ukrainian. You could be only published in Russian language. So for us now it's very important so we will tell about these stories. And in the end Vasyl Stus died in prison because he was fighting in the meaning as he was a dissident and he was publishing poems that were not very convenient for that government at that time. Why I am speaking about him because the project that I will be talking about started with a quote from his poem and this quote was very popular in Ukraine because one of the soldiers that was fighting in the front line, he read it on the video while he was bombed. What do you do when you are under the shielding? And he was reading the poetry of Vasyl Stus about the dignity that you need to stand your ground to be in this place and to do what you are doing, to protect what you are protecting. And this poetry is about this. And this was the quote that we chose and we wrote about the idea of the project to our partners in Vilnius. And they recall for us. We decided to do the project connected to the young writers or emerging writers in Ukraine and in Lithuania. The idea was very simple. We did this program before the war but the theme as you can understand changed and we started to work with how do you go to the freedom? What is your way to the freedom? How do you find your ground in the times when everything is crashing all over Ukraine and not only in Ukraine because the idea was to also talk to Lithuanian authors because Lithuania is also now on the border with all of this, what has happened. And they have their own history about this singing revolution in Lithuania when the Soviet Union army killed people and they were trying to take day freedom. So we have this connection and we found the support from their side in the meaning of money because as you can imagine in Ukraine now we don't have a lot of money for culture because we need to still stand our ground in this war and we started to collect the novels, short novels from all over Ukraine and from Lithuania about this time. We just about your experience how to find the freedom and it was very interesting for us. We got the novels from all over Ukraine like from the cities that were under the shilling at that moment and also from the people who moved because of the war who were now not in Ukraine because the war started. And this very strange, like the story that was built from this one point, like from the point of war and from the point of going from the war to another country it showed us a very similar and understandable position of hurt that these people, all of us, the Ukrainians now are people who are hurting from what is happening in very different ways. And I want to recall the question that was on the previous panel about this Syrian who are also running and when I am talking about this war and when we are talking about this war we need to understand that it's not conflict between Ukrainians and Russians. It's another aggression against the people that are done by the Russian country. And this, what we need to understand, the Georgian people, the Lithuanian people, we are in the solidarity because of this hurt, because of this pain that was done to us. And when we presented this project to our colleagues in the cities of literature in Australia they decided to do the translation into English because we did the translation from Lithuanian to Ukrainian from Ukrainian to Lithuanian, all the texts are translated and now they will be also published in English and I think that we will do this year also another project but with poetry because we work with literature as a method of remembrance and the method of gathering all this expression because I think I know history is very important but as a person who works with literature I should say that sometimes the novel which was written or the poetry which was written at the moment of the tragedy says you more than all the stories you can hear from that moment. Excuse me, Bogdana? Yes, I am finishing. So thank you and that was like a very brief presentation. The last I think is not very good visible but this is our first page and this red line that you see we decided to show it like the red line that you cannot cross or cannot stand back because you need to stand your ground to find your freedom. So that's all, thank you. Thank you Bogdana and sorry for being so brutal with the time but that's just in the interest of the following speakers. We will stay in the field of literature and translation because also Maciej Piotrowski has told us in the preparatory meeting that for him the reading of each other's literature is a key factor so Maciej is a historian and studies scholar and animator of cultural life in the Polish-Ukrainian borderland. He has worked on the exhibition of the Holodomor Museum in Kiev and he translates Ukrainian literature such as the novel now you help me to pronounce the Ukrainian name I would say it in English the Yellow Prince and he has collaborated with the Creators Foundation the College of Eastern Europe and the Falkovsky Association. So Maciej can you confirm what was said before that contemporary literature is a means of expression of what contemporaries live through and yeah please speak about your work of translating it into different languages, thank you. Okay, thank you. So truly I am working with literature but also with exhibition in Nizia Design International exhibition museums, literary, cultural projects all it's about narration, about something which has to be then told to people and translates to another people to another culture. However maybe I will start with my personal story because it's something about searching of solidarity, of mutual understanding because I myself was born on Polish-Ukrainian borderland on Zamoistczysna region in Poland and it was something in 20th century which was called by Timothy Snyder as a bloodlands places of genocides, of ethnic cleansing but for me in my young years it was just my homeland the place where I was rising doing some first projects but once I went by bus across the border to Lviv, beautiful city where Bogdana is working and I discovered this vivid place a real city with modern cultural life not just historical buildings, cemeteries but real modern life and I start to cooperate with artists, with musicians from Lviv and started to bringing them to Poland and different events, festivals and starting to connecting to groups and we establish why I was studying on Lviv University establish with brothers and friends association of borderland culture and starting to animate this life on borderland maybe what is important here that was funded in the village which was wiped out by Polish-Ukrainian conflict however we want to make this place Gorajec little village in Poland recreate from the symbol of tragic past of Polish-Ukrainian history to a site of reconciliation of our nations by doing creative work maybe I will jump in time a little bit and talk also about the hugest challenge of mine because after these creative cultural projects I moved to Warsaw and start cooperation with Nizio Design International and Holodomor Museum in Kiev which is building now I'm working for years on this project and I think it's really important not only because of that it is very huge and important from an artistical and architectural point of view and because of that it will be the first this scale modern museum on Ukraine but also because of this my personal story because of that historical burdens of Polish-Ukrainian history and by that, by this project we can show that Polish-Ukrainians can do together very huge great historical project and maybe I will not focus on this because tomorrow we will have a chance to listen to the leader of the project Mirosław Nizio and he will talk more about this great initiative but I will just say about my role as a historian because I am in this project a bridge between the team of curators from Kiev and team of designers from Poland in this transnational-international consortium and I am helping, trying to help them to understand each other translating not only the words but also the some context some historical background and trying to also not to impose some solutions from Poland to Ukraine but trying to debate to discuss about it but yes maybe more about it later so in connection also to tell about literature as it was said I am a translator of literature book about Holodomor Vasilbarka Yellow Prince first after 60 years after publishing it it is published in Poland now and what is maybe important here I also tried to animate this environment of translators in Central Europe and try to make some platform of cooperation of translators we create with friends in 2018 a project called Rostae Crossroads and is gathering people from Latvia to Serbia from Poland to Ukraine and it wasn't just another grant project just not another seminar but this platform when we making friends making strong relations with each other trying to communicate, help, promote each other but maybe also later about this strengthening the professional communication and standards however in this our work of cultural animators, translators, exhibition and museology work this work was changed by February 24 open Russian aggression against Ukraine against our neighbour and it turns most of this project upside down but I think due to these networks which was created we maintain some balance and for example in Nizia Design we were trying by our NGOs, Nizia Foundation we are trying to firstly support Ukrainian migrants coming to Warsaw and making project for young artists who became architectural artists who can be designers of such project as Holodomor Museum in future and also we maintain contact with Holodomor Museum team and trying to work together to make our project implementable in the future because of course now due to war it is really hard to work on such a team but it is very crucial for our nations also in other my activities like in this translators group Rostae we establish a scholarship for Ukrainian best reporters and due to by our networks in media in translators we were translating their reports from Ukraine and publishing it in the best media of Central Europe in I suppose now seven or eight languages and giving the floor to the Ukrainians they can speak in their voices translated by translators from Central Europe so from all these projects to tell about solidarity I can say that for solidarity you need mutual understanding and translator and cultural animation is I think important in this project in this process because we can help people to communicate to understand these narratives which is produced by culture and translate it to another world of another culture thank you thank you so much Maciej you said that for solidarity we need to understand each other and translation for you is a means translation of narratives now if we stay in this image we will now look at the case of how historical narratives can be confronted with each other and brought into context with each other and how better understanding of each other's historical narrative can lead to mutual understanding and that is what Erky Tuyo Moyer is working on and because he is the founding chairman of Historians Without Borders in Finland he has been working on that since 2015 and he has a PhD in social sciences master in economics and business administration and he is teaching political history at the University of Helsinki and he has also a very impressive political career behind him so Erky could you speak a little bit about how history, how reconciling or historical narratives works and also probably the current challenges that you face in the current situation thank you thank you coming from Finland I think that we do have some knowledge and experience of both resistance and solidarity and today of course there are lots of references to our experiences during the Winter War 1939 and we are very this is fine with us as long as people do not refer to the continuation in 1941 when we joined the Nazi attack against the Soviet Union but I would also like to remind you of 1918 because 1918 we had a bloody civil war in Finland with tens of thousands of people killed but luckily at the end of the war we avoided both a fascist and a communist dictatorship but the civil war left a very bitter legacy in the country and it was only really overcome of course by our joining together against the aggression in 1939 but actually it took about a hundred years before we could share the memories of the civil war with all the parties acting together and the descendants doing this together and this brings me to the role of memory in history because as historians who write history and use historical sources know memory is always the most unreliable part of the sources you use it is subjective and it is also very selective but it is necessary to use them and I think we should work to get memories into shared memories of also the most difficult parts of our history and this is what historians without borders is about it was based on the countless occasions that I both as foreign minister in my country and as a historian had encountered how history kept being used and misused, abused to foster conflicts and prevent conflict resolution in various parts of the world and even very ancient history think about 1385 in the Balkans is still very much alive and being used to prevent reconciliation and conflict prevention so we asked ourselves what should historians do to prevent this kind of misuse because mostly it is not historians themselves there are exceptions unfortunately but it is mostly the media and politicians who primarily misuse and abuse history for their own ends and we wanted to bring historians across borders together to counter this misuse and abuse of history so we founded the history of borders as a Finnish NGO in 2015 as the secretariat for the international network of historians without borders which we established at the end of our international conference on the use and abuse of history in 2016 yes and according to the declaration which was adopted at the conference our aim is to deepen general and comprehensive knowledge and understanding of history promote open and free access to historical materials and archives encourage interactive dialogue between different views and interpretations of history to assist in the process of mutual understanding and support efforts to identify the abuse of history in fostering and sustaining conflicts help diffuse conflicts and contribute to conflict resolution processes and to promote the teaching of history and the spirit of this declaration and in also incorporating an understanding of the role of women and gender perspectives in efforts to build peace and resolve conflicts so we are not primarily seeking to take sides in any conflicts about different interpretations of history rather we have seen our role as a facilitator bringing together opposing parties in conflicts concerning history with the aim of removing this use in conflicts so it's more than resistance it's about reconciliation whenever possible and thus at our 2016 conference in Helsinki we had workshops bringing together historians from inter alia Israel and Palestine Turkey and Armenia Finland and Russia and historians from former colonies and colonial powers and we have also sought to spread knowledge of and interest in truth and reconciliation commissions of which there are both good and less good examples from different parts of the world and concretely we have been able to promote the establishment of a truth and reconciliation commission based on an agreement between the government of Finland and the Sami Parliament on the history and treatment of the indigenous Sami people in Finland other items we have addressed is the role of Belarus in Europe at the seminar between Nordic and Belarusian historians in 2020 when it was still possible to confer with independent Belarusian colleagues we have also arranged two meetings of historians from Ukraine and Russia in Finland but this was before the war obviously and obviously as long as the war continues this kind of dialogue is impossible but historians from both sides have indicated their interest in continuing this dialogue when it again becomes possible with the Russian invasion of Ukraine the use of history justification for war and as part of enemy images and narratives is a re-European reality and Putin justifies his actions with symbols and narratives anchored in history as well as demonizing Ukrainians with strongly loaded accusations Ukraine and western countries that support this also made use of historical concepts images of enemies and symbolism and on this day we arranged a panel discussion in Berlin last December with the participation of Russian historians living today in diaspora because of the conditions in Russia and thus we are also seeking to bring together his Russian historians living in the diaspora today to support their work in preparing for a post-Putin Russia Putin will not last forever and with Putin there is no scope for historical dialogue but we need to also incorporate the work of Russian historians in this because not all Russian historians are Putinist and I have had the occasion twice to give a presentation of historians without borders at the Academy of Sciences in Moscow when it was still possible and I was impressed by the professionalism and independence of Russian historians but since then of course conditions have changed and many of these people have now living in diaspora but bringing them together and supporting them to start a process of also in Russia is I think a very important contribution for us to show our solidarity in action and an open and honest dialogue with your former adversaries is a necessity for keeping the peace in the future and removing the use of history in conflicts. Thank you. Thank you very much also for preventing me to cut you it's heartbreaking to cut so interesting and complex presentations but we have two speakers who should also get their scene so we now move to Luisa Yordake-Castea who as I already said is a little bit a bridge between Romania and Spain because she has lived in both and she's currently a lecturer and professor at the Department of Contemporary History at the University at the National University of Distance Education she has a PhD in Political Science and she told me before the panel that her main research interest is in humanitarian aid so a very practical and very necessary especially in current times form of solidarity so Luisa the floor is yours. Thank you very much Constance thank you very much for this invitation to the organizers and also to our guests the University of Barcelona Eurom and Fundación Solidaridad thank you also for this opportunity to present our projects and should share our work I will switch to Spanish Buen Pensar esta intervención I'm going to start my talk with the Minister of Foreign Affairs British Minister Edward Gray August 1914 when he was observing how the lamps in the streets of London were being light up lights are being turned down all over Europe maybe we won't see them again in our lives this sentence summarizes the beginning of a critical period in the history of Europe as we know it was a period of total war with an escalate of violence with the confrontation of concentrationary systems intermincams concentration camps forced labour killings of civil citizens and other sequela which affected the civil population which was forced to be displaced exilium, hunger, deportation annihilation for political reasons national, international and a context of economic crisis and search of Soviet communism and also the search of fascism in different countries of Europe however in the darkness of Europe since 1914 some lights were light up the ones of solidarity of humanitarian aid, humanitarianism volunteerism and the culture of peace and these subjects contribute with two projects by an international team first of all the Unicred project that has ended and now the Remnant Child project a project that we just started with an important network of members and as the previous project Migrate is centered among other aspects in the importance of humanitarian aid and also solidarity especially during the first half of the 23 meaning the first two world wars and the Spanish Civil War we all know that solidarity is an idea, it's a concept it's a principle practice and action and through the activities of Migrate and other projects we showed that this solidarity was the alma mater of the fight for the survival and also the combat against the dehumanization caused by wars and weapons both conflicts and also the Spanish Civil War raised borders between combatants and non combatants between the army and civil population becoming the scenario of atrocities atrocities committed on defenseless and innocent people in this sense with our projects and our activities the humanitarian aid deployed at that time was the maximum expression of solidarity by taking care of civil population especially the most vulnerable one children, women pregnant women and the elderly helping the children giving aid to the refugees taking care of the sick feeding the population distributing humanitarian and moral help more humanitarian actions of solidarity of the European countries actions developed by volunteers and with the help of many organizations, humanitarian organizations the international committee of the Red Cross the Save the Children Union Internacional the Securos and Found British American Committees etc also with our projects through Revenant Child and Migrate we proved that this humanitarian task in this humanitarian task the fundamental role was played by women for ringers of humanistic values protectors of childhood promoters of peace defending rights and freedoms and protecting lives with this we also want to say that we should not forget that the Red Cross were fought also by women with their efforts in the variety of tasks they carry out at different fronts and unfortunately getting to know history and its teaching of solidarity has not avoided new humanitarian crisis new waves of refugees new conflicts war conflicts and many other violations of international humanitarian law although there is a lot of knowledge and promotion in protection of civil society events in different parts of the world nowadays in Ukraine but in the recent past for example Iraq, Afghanistan, Rwanda Bosnia etc proved that civilians continue to be the objectives and targets and main victims of war violence and this is why from Migrate and Revenant Child we want to make an appeal to the idea that the construction of peace and the consolidation of the culture of peace and also solidarity it's a permanent task and mutual teaching among generations our projects attempt to improve the knowledge about this recent past to make visible not only the negative aspects of the conflicts but also to highlight other aspects such as solidarity and humanitarian aid and we do it through exhibitions international conferences workshops travel seminars local and national actions with the aim of preserving this past and both all to recover the collective individual and individual experiences of people let me conclude my intervention the same way I started but this time from Maria Zambrano, philosopher a quote that you find in our catalogue of exhibitions may peace and peace is not only the absence of war but it's much more and beyond it's lifestyle it's a way of inhabiting the planet and with these projects the whole of our team want to contribute with sudden grain to this noble desire and solidarity for the new generations of today and tomorrow, thank you thank you Luisa by mentioning the teaching of history you gave me a nice transition to our speaker who is contributing to observing how history is being taught and as we spoke about state actors and history well the construction of historical narratives and the teaching of them of course schools are one of the outlets if I may say so of how governments teach history and has been also over the past so it's very interesting to analyse how history is being taught in different countries and this is what our last speaker Finmort and Hackard works on because he's project officer at the observatory on history teaching in Europe of the Council of Europe but he's also working on the education and cooperation laboratory and he completed a master's degree in southeast European studies at the University of Graz and the University College London so I hand over to you and then we will go to the audience for some questions all right thank you very much for the invitation and for the introduction indeed I'm representing here today mainly the observatory on history teaching in Europe which is in a large partial agreement of the Council of Europe perhaps to understand the importance of history teaching and our initiative in the context of solidarity and mutual understanding it is worth to contextualise it very shortly in the Council of Europe and in the activities of the Council of Europe in the field of history teaching so history teaching has from the very beginning of the organisation after the Second World War has been recognised as a very important feature and element of building and preserving peace in Europe and to prevent these catastrophes of the Holocaust and Second World War from happening again on the continent in this way there was a lot of intergovernmental corporations focusing on textbook revisions on recommendations how to teach the European dimension history teaching and teaching multiple perspectives in the classrooms to exactly with this goal to promote mutual understanding between people in Europe and the observatory and history teaching in Europe is quite a new initiative as it was established in 2020 and it complements the work of the Council of Europe in this field by looking at how history is actually taught in its member states so we do this by actually several activities so we have the reporting side of the activities so we generally, yeah maybe it's better to contextualise who's actually part of the observatory so the Council of Europe is the organisation with the 46 member states of Europe and inside this it's a partial agreement as I said I don't know how I can now change the, yeah there it is I think thank you so inside the Council of Europe the observatory is a partial agreement with 16 member states here you can see and so actually what we do is we have the vision in line with what I just said about the Council of Europe to actually foster mutual understanding and democratic culture through teaching history and so what we are doing is we try, we do this by the issuing and creating two types of reports we have the general report on the state of history teaching in Europe which will be the first one to be released this year where we look into exactly for example the how, what place does history have in the educational system of the member states meaning is it a standalone subject, is it integrated with other subjects then to see how the curricula are written are they written by the government alone consultation with civil society organizations, what are the preconditions of teachers to fulfill to be allowed to study history basically and also to see how actually history is taught in practice, is the European dimension recognized there as well marginalized groups, the history of marginalized groups, are they implemented there and are multiple perspectives integrated in the teaching or is it rather telling of a national narrative in the history classroom so besides the regular report we also have the thematic reports which is a good chance to look into how the history is taught in regard to a special specific topic more in detail so the first one was on the teaching of pandemics and natural disasters and the second one will be issued last year and the second one will be issued this year in 2024 is how social and economic crisis are taught in the history classes and these reports what makes them valuable is actually to have a basis to see how history is taught which can actually as a basis a factual basis enable to discuss the ways history is taught with the view to promoting these values of the Council of Europe and then the member states have so we do this with a variety of methods so we have the information from the governments of course from the ministries on how they organize the history teaching but of course we cannot solely rely on the state information in those reports so we cooperate with teacher organizations and we had a quite huge teacher questionnaire and we managed to get over 6,000 responses from teachers from the government and to complement it so that we have a really more coherent and complex picture of the history teaching in the member states so then besides this which is the part of the observatory reporting we have a joint project with the European commission which does not only of course then apply to the 16 member states but to all the countries of the European Union and all the countries of the Council of Europe so what we do here we always say while the observatory is looking into how history is actually taught at the present moment with the joint project we are looking into how history could be taught in the future so we had a lot of initiatives in this regard so we created this digital platform of the history of the joint project and we actually I don't know if you could if we can click we link the portal there where we actually try to build a database of organizations and experts in the field of history education in Europe and worldwide because our partners and also the colleague from the Serb national point reported for me today in a conversation that often we do not know what actually initiatives and organizations exist in the field of history education so the aim is to bring them together if you could click on the his connect button there you could see the can I do it myself no okay the his connect button there at the very top there exactly and also call for you to register yourself and your organizations and initiatives at the platform in order to help building this database it is very new it was released around two days ago so it's growing and we get new membership applications on everyday basis and it will also serve as a can we go back to the presentation thank you as a forum where projects can be presented call for events can be promoted and shared with the actually wide audience for example I don't know how I can make the video play probably here not at all which is embedded video embedded on the slide perhaps if you just click on it it should play so on the PowerPoint slide this is the browser I think you have to go on PowerPoint it doesn't work well however the idea is that we build this database with the calendar of events where the organizations can promote the events enter them so we have actually a point where history educators and people from the field can learn about initiatives, events, new publications and projects that are out there in the field and to connect with each other this we complement with the laptop frozen and besides this we also have a resource hub where we actually bring together the massive amount of resources produced by projects in the field which are very difficult to navigate which promote European dimension in history teaching and the multiple perspectives in teaching by making by not really incorporating them in the platform but to provide a tool through which people, educators can see the areas of interest that they're interested in and find the projects and the resources that exist and be redirected to their pages and to their resources to make them, yeah well more navigable on the wide range of the internet and this is complemented with some other actual fellowship I presented yesterday or the European innovation days on history education and yeah, this is what we mainly do in the observatory and in the Council of Europe in the field of history education thank you thank you very much Finn, I will try now briefly to summarize what I've heard but in very broad lines to connect what you've all been saying and I will add one question from my side that came up but immediately open the floor to your questions because then perhaps the speakers can take some of the questions at once otherwise if we have another round you won't get the floor so what I picked up from all the highly interesting and very complex statements is that in your view which seems to be a very optimistic positive view solidarity can indeed be created through mutual understanding fostering mutual understanding and vehicles of that understanding of creating that understanding are according to you to look at each other's narratives to look at literature to look at history memory to try to understand each other's position through oral history projects through history teaching and through exhibitions and this reminds me of what Timothy Garten Esch once said in an event at the House of European History when he said that rather than telling always our own stories we should start to be able to have empathy and to start being able to telling each other's stories so in that case he mentioned that Germans should be able to tell Greek stories and vice versa and not always looking at their own position so this brings me to my question which is actually to reflect on the impact of what you're doing I don't know in how far you are doing that this is a very difficult question also for us as human makers what is the impact of what we are doing and if we heard this morning that the distortion of history and memory is used politically and can by that have an impact on the course of history can have an impact on the present how turning it the other way around how can your work have this impact this positive impact for reconciliation you mentioned in the beginning the singing revolution in the Baltic countries in a way it's very encouraging that art can make even can make history move so the question of the impact of what you are doing can you measure it can you see how it works who is your audience that would be my follow up question but I would also like to open the floor now to the audience that you can then answer several questions at once because otherwise we will not leave the audience enough time so I would now like to open the floor and here is the microphone and please ask your questions I will see who is first no question for a moment yes the gentleman over there hello I will raise the brave one I wanted to ask what are you as the first responder probably someone else also my join what I was thinking for two days sitting in this great audience is that we are speaking about solidarity and solidarity amongst historians with history with historical matters and mostly we are speaking about form of action which is solidarity but besides this form of action there is values and there are motivations mostly we are speaking about solidarity based on European values democracy rule of law etc etc etc which actually are rather new phenomenon in European history and as historians we are very often dealing with the periods and processes outside of this framework which makes us a trouble what I was thinking looking on these beautiful pictures on the wall is that aren't we losing connection with history historical connection not only with political sustainability of democracy which civic education is one of the basis with cultural Europeanization or Europeanization and sustainability of cultural sustainability of cultural dimension of our identity or how we could avoid this split to merge them together these are very important and complex questions first of all I think that the primary object of solidarity for historians should be solidarity with facts and solidarity with truth even with unpalatable truths and facts and that is a hard criterion which historians need but then also I would like to say that historians without borders is not only about Europe we are also we have had contacts with historians in Africa, in Asia in North America all over the world and one of our aims has been to find the conditions we had actually a seminar in Johannesburg, South Africa where we brought together historians from colonial former colonial powers and former colonies and this is the kind of thing that we would like to also continue with because this colonial history has been mostly written by historians from either the colonial powers or the former colonies with very little interaction between them so this is the kind of grand vision we have also but there are other items and particularly when we are today concerned why is the rest of the world not joining us in supporting Ukraine as we are doing and not joining all the sanctions against the aggressor which we have set I think we also need to look at history and how this history is seen from the other parts of the world and that there may be also cases of double standards involved so there are questions why we have not reacted in a similar manner to other occupations, other illegal occupations and other wars in the world so I think this is a lesson that we need to look at Europe also from the outside non-European eyes we don't have to compromise on our values that's quite clear but we have to understand also the narrative and perspective from other parts of the world thank you very much I have my question to Mr. Maciej Piotrowski I listened to your presentation with deep interest and I would like to ask you whether you are directing also some of your activities especially in literature in translations vis-à-vis this huge population of Ukrainian refugees which are now in Poland thank you of course now we have this situation where Poland first time in like 800 years are multicultural place all my life there was only Poles in Poland almost 95% now there is huge population of Ukrainians and we have to cooperate with it and I think due to action of all of us all of this cultural sector of historians museologists we have some common grants to cooperate and every one of us it's a little piece to this building this common platform common grant and due to this and because of that we share common values thanks to the all the culture creators of culture from Vasyl Sturz, Vasyl Barca Polish writers and translators who translates Bigniew Herbert to Ukrainians and for example Vasyl Sturz to Polish we have this common understanding which help us to talk with each other and of course many of books many of projects Holodomor Museum we make some exhibition in Warsaw to show how we created this concept of exhibition was event all these events was both visited by Polish and Ukrainians in Warsaw and that is helping us to meet in one place due to this work of all people from many generations sharing this and popularization of this European values of course of neighborhood didn't want to share these values for us also there was translators from Russian there were people who want to make Russia and Poland also understand each other they due to political reasons due to choice of Russian government and Russian nation this process with Russia was failed and Russia now we cannot have any solidarity for war criminals from these places and that's big problem for us cultural workers can do this big work but of course it isn't enough and it isn't possible every time it's not that beautiful world that we will love each other to answer your question and ask your question about impacts of our projects yes I think it's possible to work with Ukrainian migrants like in also programs for young people in Nizia foundation we can work due to this very very long work of cultural workers thank you hello I'm just shocked yesterday I was just playing chess down there as math student and I studied math 23 years ago I guess and history of science and journalism in different places and we are finishing a book we are four of us and we got the grant in Montevideo in the ministry of science and education and it's a book that's just talking about migrations people migrations plants migrations but human migrations from I guess at least 2000 years ago somehow we are four of us and we are drawing to people drawing to writing in both sides of the Atlantic side our side Mediterranean one so what I'm just I'm shocked because we are concerned concerned about everything has been talked about we were unconnected so we are publishing on September about September and I wonder if there is a way just to even to fact check checking what we wrote for instance because we are aware that we have responsibility we know that I'm even more concerned with this subjective truth we are collectively constructing so I think I'm pleased to be here because yesterday I was just passing from one yard to the other and just wanted to say that this in order to keep or collect interests of cross bridging because we have also talking about the narrative dimension we have also a open code augmented reality application which is thought and it's working with neighbourhoods and this is common community I don't know how to say it but memory of neighbourhoods which includes people coming from we are in Barcelona I was born here so diversity of people who are arriving just bringing stories and bringing different cultures it's a huge thing so it's third time as I am shocked but pleased to be here thank you very much that's a very very pertinent question can we be and the responsibility of the narrator one of the panellists want to react to this statement if I may because it actually the world has been changed in the fact that historians have been mostly engaged in writing their own national history and from their own national perspective and from their own population's perspective but in today's world in today's Europe we have countries where 10 to 20% of the population are people who are born from in other countries and represent other cultures so this is a challenge for us as historians to be able to incorporate the different histories and backgrounds and cultures in a common historical but I think this is a positive challenge because it challenges our way from a very narrow nationalistic point of view to your own history and neglecting other points of view so I welcome this challenge even if it is in practice a very difficult one hello everybody I'm Mario I'm from Portugal I'm from the University of Porto and I would like to thank you for your I think interesting interventions to make two questions one statement two questions to Elki and to Finn I'm considering the beginnings of the transformation that occurred in Europe in a period I call in between centuries between 19 and 20th century and I tell you of the literature to the spread of the history we've got some writers like Steven Swig for instance Joseph Roth Ernesto Mingui and we've got another historian and economical writer that is Carl Polany that they wrote about the history that led to the situation that we achieved in the 1930s decade but they were writers that were rare and they were not historians but they spread the message and the question is like then 100 years ago I would say Steven Swig there are novels a novel that is called a book that is called The World of Yesterday I think it's very important to understand the passage between the 19th and the 20th century and all that happened there the question is who do we have now writing about the present to reach the next generations we've got some movies we've got a movie for instance I would say the title in Spanish El Olvido Que Seremos that is a very important movie that was made and also a Catalan movie that is called Mediterrani that told us about the reality about South America and about the refugees of the Mediterranean but in literature I would like to know who is writing now about what is passing now in Europe for instance and the final question is for Fin what are we doing in the history teaching all around Europe just to tell the story of both sides let's say not about history that could give the opportunity to the students to reach the information to create their own opinion about what happened in the history of the late of the last 100 years for instance just to understand what happened in the view of one side of the barricade and the other side of the barricade because we know history is made by the winners of the political process of the war process thank you very much thank you well prepared to answer the question of the literature first of all but I will answer the second one I guess well, if I understood your question right it was about whether one shall or how to teach history of the other side I mean it's generally what the Council of Europe tries to do is or tries to encourage because is that for example the end of World War II for example you get the perspective of the French of the Allied and also of the occupation also the perspective of the German side on this end of the war and the partition of the Cold War so it's actually contrasting as you said also different narratives so you get to get the stories and the diversity of stories actually in the history classroom not only from different countries but also from different groups in society like to hear the actually the voices of persecuted of the Nazi regime in the classrooms next to learning about the functioning of the Nazi regime for example but it's a general to diversify the narratives that you get in the classroom and not to have a single narrative and there are many ways to achieve that I believe and we also go and tell the members that how is it best to do this but we observe how it is done in the classroom and we start the dialogue with the civil society and with the organizations in this field to have an exchange on how to reflect on this and if there's need in how to improve on this every historian has his own national and cultural biases some more some less but nobody is completely free from that that is why it is not enough to try and write history from the other point of view but it's also important to listen to the narrative of the other side you do not have to accept it, you can contest it but you have to listen to it and you have to know if that is the beginning for any kind of cross-border, cross-cultural historical understanding and I'm worried in general about the role of history in today's world because at least in Finland what I know is that the situation is similar in many other countries that the teaching of history has been reduced in schools and it has become a voluntary subject in many cases and the less people are aware of how and from what we have a right from where we are today the less unable they are to see into the future either and they become easily captured by historical myths and those who abuse history for their own ends so I think that we have a common interest in trying to strengthen the learning and understanding of history in all spaces I believe today it's possible to graduate from universities if you are not studying history without being able to correctly answer the question who were fighting the first and second world wars against each other One last question It's maybe not questions it's like reflection that I think a lot that we need these two sides both a lot of opinions but now I'm staying in Ukraine last year I'm not Ukrainian refugees but I'm traveling a lot to Europe and when I come to European Historical Museum also like museum in Berlin Museum of Capitulation I see only these two boats yes two sides and these two sides it's German Nazi and this is Russia like victory and I not see in this museum history of Ukrainian experience of second world and other country and I think this algorithm of two sides of both sides not work now and I'm also thinking about this good Russia where this good Russia and good Russia historical and where the result of work of this good Russia historical for also for Ukraine for Syria and for other country which was under attack last year and I'm also understand that it's not work and for me is the questions what work for teaching for museum workers and for people who inside of war because for me like young generator it's concept destroying when work on to Ukraine and is the questions for all we are all professional we all work with memory and I think now is the end of this conception thank you thank you very much and with this last statement perhaps I would like to give the two ladies the opportunity to speak a second time also and also the last question still resonates in my mind the question of who is writing the literature that our children will read about today's situation and I think some examples were mentioned in the Ukrainian first example so who wants to go first Luisa yes I would like to ask to the question about the impact I'm going to do it in Castellano the impact of Spanish the impact the impact we are searching with these two projects Migrate and Membrane Child is knowledge in order to approach humanitarian practice to wider audience to disseminate this humanitarian aid in its most noble and pure version the way it was practiced at different times in our recent history and I'm thinking about during first world war Spanish civil war and second world war practiced by volunteers and women men and women from solidarity kindness based on their beliefs religious beliefs and pacifist beliefs therefore the impact we are searching is to communicate the idea of humanitarian aid and human natureism on the principle of helping people to alleviate their suffering and to provide the most dignified human conditions or maybe to preserve his or her life especially in the case of children to help and alleviate victims of war through examples fights and veracity through I had another answer because during the last intervention someone was talking about the God Russia effectively we do have yes we do have different visions based on the past what we've lived in Eastern Europe and the experiences we have had in the rest of Europe for many children of the war victims of the Spanish civil war that were evacuated to the Soviet Union between 1937 and 1938 the Soviet Union was their second homeland the Soviet Union was good for them a country that welcomed them took care of them educated them far away from their home country and their families thank you Luisa sorry I will probably just explain what all how about it's not only Russia Soviet Union sorry thank you that's why I wanted to explain also I would like to give the last word Dana you had the first and the last yeah a lot of thoughts I should say while listening to all what is what was said first of all when we are talking about literature to read about what is happening now in Europe we need to translate more and not from the larger languages like English Spanish or Russian but from the small languages from the small countries that are in the situations that we don't know the real story from the inside and I'm not speaking about Ukrainians now I'm speaking about the singing revolution in Lithuania we don't know what was like how was it to be there at that time what they felt after I went to Lithuania to my friends and they told me their story while we were doing the project with translation and with the young writers the second thing is we shouldn't do the work to bring the terminology about this time that is happening now and using it already that I mean about the Putin's Russian sorry but it's to determine or the word or the part of word that we can use to be connected to the history that is happening now if we need to be objective as I understand from the mission of the historians through the borders if we should wait before we do determine what is happening the word what is happening now and how we understand the country which is doing the things that they are doing now it's not only Putin it's very important for Georgian people it's very important for Ukrainian people that all the history that is told about what is happening now in our country is not used with explanation about only one person who is responsible it's like understand and will not agree from my perspective about the impact as I was saying we are now focused of working with the translation of working with knowing more about the countries that are that weren't in our focus before that because we need to acknowledge that Ukraine Georgia, Lithuania, Estonia Finland were under influence of the Russian country for a long time and we didn't communicate with each other as we should be just this little border and also Belarus little border between Europe and Russia and we don't know the history the history of the countries that are at the same line and this was the big how to say it surprise for me that we are not communicating and we are not translating from the languages this is our focus of our office now and the impact that I got from the project that we did the last year that we need to work more with the people who are on the same border with the aggression that is happening in our country now also as I understood when we are speaking together and we are looking for the smaller speaker not for the bigger one like in the meaning of the country the culture we can hear a very surprising point of view to the history that was all I was talking about when she was talking about the perspective of the Second World War because in Ukraine it's also the same we didn't took part we didn't fight in Second World if you are listening to the Russian historical books there was only Russian heroics in the front line there was only Russians in the front and they were saving all the people in the world from what was happening but it isn't true there is a beautiful book of Ukrainian cinema director Oleksandr Dozhenko who fought in the war during the war and he wrote it it's like how it is, notebook of his all the stories from the war were cut and published without some pieces in the Soviet times and only I think two or three years ago we got the whole book published and this is the story that amazed me he was explaining how awful it was for Ukraine the Second World War for our territory we are not speaking about this when we are speaking in Europe about the Second World War as Olga said it's a perspective of the winner and the bigger one sorry thank you very much we were asked this morning what we can be proud of perhaps it's too strong a word but what you are all doing especially gives me a sense of hope a sense of reconciliation and solidarity is there and that it can be created now we heard something that we also say at the end of our exhibition in the House of Europe in History that because of the diversity of who we are in Europe and because of the diversity of our histories and the diversity of our memories that we have heard about and the diversity of our narratives be they made by big or small actors we need translations and Umberto Eco said translations in the language of Europe so you all showed that this is possible and necessary and I would add to that that those what we translate what does it need it needs listening it needs listeners it needs readers it needs the receiving end as well and that is what I hope for and that is what we will also continue now to do during the speaking exercise and for your patients and now I won't stand in the way of your lunch anymore thank you for your patience