 It is a pleasure for us to host our dear partners from different European countries. This panel is hosting other beneficiary organisations like our Observatory and we have also a pleasure to have with us Gilles Pelayo from the Education and Culture Executive Agency, which is the organisation managing the European Funds for Remembrance Projects. As Jordi, our director, just mentioned, the Observatory was founded under the umbrella of the University of Barcelona Solidarity Foundation already ten years ago. So, with the support of the European Commission, we started with an action grant in 2012 and then we got the support of an operating grant. Ten years, time flies. In ten years, things have changed quite a lot in the sphere of the European Union Remembrance Policies. In fact, our first project was titled for a European democratic memory beyond Nazism and Stalinism. Why? In that moment, most of the projects that were accepted by the European Commission were devoted to address the topics of Nazism and Stalinism, its causes and consequences. But very poorly, other kinds of projects were accepted in that time. So, what happened with other memories? As previously the director said, we should get used to talk in plural memories, not memory. So, what happened with the travels in Northern Ireland, for instance? What happened with the Civil War in Greece? What happened with the Spanish War? These were memories that were not taken seriously in that time. So, together with other partners, when we started our proposal, we got some attention from other partners from different countries. Also, we were interested in getting representation in this European arena. One of our funding pillars was, since the very beginning, to get the visibility of these multiple memories existing in all member states. That's why we started with this network with a few partners. And today, we are proud to say that we have 53 partners from more than 20 countries. And together with them, we try to analyze the different policies that are developed all around Europe, but also the conflicts. As we normally say, memory is normally conflict. With the enlargement of the European Union in 204 and then 207, the new member states brought new points of view about memory and remembrance. We are all aware of this. New partners from Eastern countries brought new ideas and new opinions on remembrance in the EU. Clearly, communism doesn't mean the same in certain Central or Eastern European countries that suffer hard repression and the totalitarian regimes. It doesn't mean the same that in other Western countries of Europe, where communist militancy, let's say, were very important for the resistance against nazism, occupation, against fascism, dictatorships. So we should put the balance on these memories, which is far from easy. And we should analyze with the help of our network what kind of remembrance policies are being developed in Europe. Quickly, from Europe, we try to put our contribution on this analysis. And we can say that today the new CERP program, Citizens, Equality, Rights and Values, embrace all these sensibilities. We feel comfortable now developing certain activities, certain programs that are touching, as it was previously said, memories connected to present issues, but also looking to the future through historical knowledge. Today's racism has its roots in the past, in colonial history, in slavery, which Europe was completely in a position of power in that time. LGBTI rights also should be addressed through memory. Gender equality, the role of women in the past. Now we are always talking on this, but 10 years ago, 15 years ago, 20 years ago, it wasn't so a broad idea. So we feel comfortable with the new program, developing all these activities and promoting projects connecting today's issues with the past, as I said. Also, we are happy to work with a European youth audience. We normally say that it's difficult to find young people in our activities. It's only the experts, the veterans associations, memorial associations and freak people like us, but it's hard to find young people. So we are also devoted to try to solve this together with our colleagues. They can also tell you about different programs involving young people in different European countries. So well, this is the short presentation of our observatory in the frame of the SERP program, and it is a pleasure to give the floor to Gilles Pelayo, who can give us a broad idea of what this new project program means. Gilles, please. Really thanks, Oriel, and really a big thank you to Ahrom for hosting this event, organizing this event. It's a real pleasure to be here for this 10th anniversary and the fifth edition of Taking Stock, say, conferences, and at last, let's say, in person to be able to be here in beautiful Barcelona now. I've got an easy task this evening because Ana Gallego, my boss, has already set the scene of the policy priorities, and I believe the important thing would be to leave the floor to the project, let's say, to the thing that we support because we don't do anything ourselves in the European Commission services. We just have the privilege of lending support to beautiful projects such as on European remembrance. I will just very quickly in front of a floor of distinguished historians take the risk of doing a very short history of what we've been doing at the European level supporting, let's say, projects on memory policies, on remembrance, and on history. Indeed, remembrance, memory, memory policy has been part of the EU policy agenda, let's say, for over 15 years now. It's relatively recent when you look at what the Union has been doing. There are some progress and some policies much more ancient than that, but let's say it took that much in the history of the European Union to get to the point where the need was felt to do this. And as much as Spain has perhaps forged or developed the concept of memoria democratica, it's very true that the EU work on memory has been since the beginning anchored and clearly framed as part of its policies of citizenship, let's say. That's where it started. And that's a way of acknowledging what has already been said, that is the vital link between history, remembrance, and related policies, and the health of our democracies. And this started in particular at the beginning of the year 2000, that's quite recent, with the creation of the Europe for Citizens program that started officially in 2007, as a case that contemporaneous to the Spanish law. I just realized this, including a specific remembrance dimension in this Europe for Citizens program. So a very visible illustration of this link between democracy and memories. This program then developed, I will make the story very short, continued. The last such program on Europe for Citizens was from 2014 to 2020. And we've been blessed to give you an idea of supporting 286 projects during that time, during those seven years, for a total amount of 27 million euros, roughly. So taking shape and growing. Initially, as you said, all real, perhaps the scope was rather limited, but important and a very wide subject, certainly, because we focused initially on issues related to totalitarian regimes and their consequences, including genocides and the Holocaust and European construction. Now we have a new program that incorporates these issues, these policies. You mentioned it, or here is the Citizens equality rights and values program. Good news is that our political masters at the European level and indeed budget masters to the European Parliament and the EU Council have understood the growing importance of those issues in the world today and in Europe today, really. And so they have given more importance to this program and just basically increased the budget. So we have started to implement this new program, the Citizens equality rights and values program, already in 21-22, the budgets have been increasing for a half million in 21 this year. We will have spent on remembrance projects 7 million euros. In 21-22, we stayed focused on, let's say, traditional areas of activities, I would say, such as the commemoration of and research and indication about crimes committed under the totalitarian regime. And also the second emphasis, more on democracy, resistance, democratic transition and democratic consolidation in the EU. But as hinted by Anne Gallego in the years and months to come, the scope of our activities and the scope of the projects we are going to support will be enlarged. Just to elaborate a bit on what she said, we will have a first priority still on democratic transition, rebuilding and strengthening societies based on the rule of law, democracy and fundamental rights. And that is where a special emphasis will be put in our causeful proposal in our programming on victims. So that's a kind of signal to all those participating to the work of this conference that there will be a space in the near future in our causeful proposals for this dimension of the victim. This will be, let's say, underline explicitly underline and we expect good projects on this. We will continue to, and that's the second priority to be working on strengthening the remembrance of the Holocaust, genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity to reinforce democracy of the EU, which means that we don't abandon those traditional priorities we continue. The third priority will indeed be, as Anne Gallego said, migration, decolonization and multicultural European society. So that's a real novelty for our program. That's a sort of quantum leap in other issues and we will be ready to support in this framework projects working around the legacy of colonialism inside and outside Europe and its impact on contemporary European society. So that's a new dimension. More margin for maneuver in the budget will be doing more of this. And finally, the fourth priority will be European integration and its defining achievement to work a bit more on the Europe itself, the European project itself. Johorne has been, for instance, commemorating the anniversary of the Vento 10 manifesto. Such actions are important because our European Union is still by historical standards in its infancy. So perhaps teenage years, so it's important to make European citizens aware of this. The final words, just to explain to all who are not familiar with this, the program is directly managed by the European Commission, which means it's not, let's say, decentralized to national or local authorities. And it's been, let's say, given for management to the agency that I represent, the education and culture executive agencies. And we do this hand in hand with the colleagues of the Director General for Justice, which is, let's say, primarily responsible for the program. That is why you have heard and I hear the Director General for Justice. In this context, I thank you and really glad to open this event. Glad to be part of a very European panel because it is our firm belief that transnational approaches to memories, to history, are really fruitful in the national context as much as they are useful in the international one. I'm really looking forward to our conversations on the so important topic of the victims and related legislations. And thank you very much. Thank you, Gilles. Well, if we follow the program, I know that there are some changes, but it's my pleasure to introduce Deborah Rigetti from the Jean Monnet House, which is one of the organizations addressing the memory of the foundations of the European Union and the umbrella of the European Parliament, and with whom we have the pleasure to develop joint activities. So Deborah is going to present the European Memories School Project, which hopefully we will develop together next year. Deborah, thank you. The floor is yours. So I'm starting. My name is Deborah Rigetti. I'm working from the Jean Monnet House of the European Parliament. This evening I will talk about a project. We are... We have a program with the... a room and with another partner, which is the Instituto Spinelli. I think you can see my screen. So it's a pleasure for me to present this project to you this evening, a project of European School on Memories, which will be organized in the Jean Monnet House, where the Schumann Declaration was written and in another iconic place of the European history, that is the Ventotene Island, where, of course, the manifesto of Ventotene was written in the 40s by Spinelli, Eugenio Colorni and Rossi. So these two iconic places of the European history will be the set of our European School on Memories. In particular, it's a pleasure to present this and this framework of the Takenstock, because indeed the origins of this project dated back to the edition of 2019 of Takenstock, which had been hosted in the Jean Monnet House. And this edition was organized also in partnership with the European Commission, which invited the beneficiaries of the program Remembrance, which was part of the Europe for Citizens program. And we, all the organizers, realized the importance to organize such meetings where we tackle these topics of memory in these places, in places like the Jean Monnet House, where, of course, the soul of Europe is present, is all around you, where memory is all around you. So the particular importance of the set of the location. And this also, we have this idea to continue this work of Takenstock, not only with civil society, but also with young people and also in another exceptional location, which is Ventotena. But after before, to talk about this project more in detail, I'd like to spend two words on the Jean Monnet House. The Jean Monnet House is located at 40 kilometers from Paris. And this was the house where Jean Monnet, the founding father of Europe, had been living from 1943, 1945 to 1979. After his death, the European Parliament decided to buy this house to make it a place of transmission of the memory of this great man and, of course, of the European history also, too, to make it a common European heritage, a place of the common European heritage. Starting from the 90s, we hosted many, many hundreds of kids, of pupils, of classes to whom we transmit, we accomplished our mission to transmit the history of the Jean Monnet, of the European integration, and, of course, of the milestones of this project of the Union, which is the European project. From 2018, the Jean Monnet House was kind of integrated in the House of European history. So the Jean Monnet House became a service of this unit. And we developed also trainings for Epistach. Epistach, who spent three days training in the Jean Monnet House, also deepened the subject, the topic of the history of the great man and the history of European integration. So, like, memory is perceived as something important, fundamental, not only for the young generation, not only for the public in general, but also for the internal staff of European institutions. Similarly, it's not only the House of citizens, but also a place hosting high-level meetings. As you can see in the photos, so in 2020 we hosted a high-level meeting among the three presidents of the European Union. And the idea is really to allow also to this high-level meeting to enjoy, to really benefit the inspiring of this place where, again, the soul of Europe, when the people, visitors, and also these high-level guests can feel and find the soul of Europe. So, coming back to the project of the school on memories, the project is in collaboration not only with Iran, but also with Instituto Spinelli. We started our collaboration in 2020 with this publication, Ventatene 80 for the 80th anniversary of the manifesto. We have the possibility to present this publication in Verona and in Ventatene for the Federalist International Seminar last summer. And here we had also the occasion to launch the school to present this project of school to young people. So, two main aspects that I'd like to underline about this project is a project that, of course, is focused on memory, but not only... Yes, of course, we start from memory of worlds, but we really focus on the memory about solidarity, about reconstruction of the European project, about this new common history starting from the 1950s, or from this common project of European... shared by old European countries. And second element, of course, as we all also underline at the very beginning of his presentation, the audience. We really wanted to address young people to not limit the discussion about memory to institutional and academic levels, but also to spread among citizens to talk about memory, about the importance also for future, for present, to interpret it present through memory, also to younger generation, to citizens and to younger generation in particular. So, my presentation is over. Thank you a lot. If you have any questions, I remain available. Thank you. Thank you very much for your presentation and for waiting till late. Then we will continue with Armudena Cruz-Yabar. So, Armudena is the responsible, is the head of the support unit from the DG for Democratic Memory of the Spanish Secretary of Democratic Memory. So, Armudena, it's a pleasure to have you on board tonight and the floor is yours. Thank you for being here. Congratulations, Eurom, for this 10 years. I will try to be brief because we are behind schedule and my train... I'm going to miss the train. After 1945, this broken Europe realized that in order to make the European territory more cohesive, it wasn't enough to create this economic cohesion. There was something else was missing and that's why the Foreign Affairs Ministers of Europe of the time in 1975 signed a declaration for European identity, which established the basis for different actions, such as the group of intellectuals that Romano put together to look at the spiritual and cultural dimension of Europe. And I'm mentioning this because that's when the European identity was more closely linked to culture and that's what I'm going to focus on. The Secretary of State talked about education. That's one of the main axes of the memory policy at this Secretary of State and the other great basis is culture. In Europe, we've had different examples, especially as a response to crisis, such as the economic crisis of 2008, where projects such as the New Narratives for Europe were implemented or the Active European Remembrance were devised. That started to fund these projects that had to do with the memory of totalitarian regimes. More recently, we have the 2019 European Parliament resolution on the importance of memory for the future of Europe or the creation in 2021 of the Remembrance Group at the European Parliament. These initiatives, in my opinion, respond to another kind of crisis, which is the refugees crisis, to appeal countries such as Germany, Austria or Denmark or even Hungary that after 1956 was split by Europe and relocalized in record time and we now see how Hungary reacts. As I would like to mention because we see that Europe ended up by establishing an ethical position against the war and in favor of democracy and what Oriol said at the start that's the feeling that we have that was basically focused on Nazism and Communism for obvious reasons, of course, but it's also true that there is a 2006 report of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe in Paris that specifically condemned the violations during the 1936 Spanish war and repression after Franco came to power. So we were also placed in the map of this same this very stage. Let's talk about memory through culture. Let's focus on culture as one of the tools for memory. This is translated into helping heritage speak. It's important to use historical heritage to link it to the legacy of our four bearers, however in German it's in English it's heritage, you receive that, that's part of the concept, but for that object to remember that object we need to add an action otherwise there will be just mere stones. How do we manage that heritage? How do we research it? How do we preserve it? How do we place it on a list of special importance? How do we musealize it? How do we opening up to tourists? How do we make it visitable? That's how that heritage will validate certain ideological stances and even articulate a whole territory. So this heritage is extremely powerful and managing it will multiply its presence and will lead us to think not about one past, but about the past, which is the past that we see from today. It might be different tomorrow, but it's going to be the past we decide about. So the new Spanish law of democratic memory I mentioned this report of the Council of Europe from 2006 condemning the violations of human rights in 1936 and the repression after Franco's regime where there were forced disappearances, extraditionary killings, concentration camp policies forced labor, torture and so on and in the preemble of this new law there is a mention of two important factors understanding the knowledge of democratic workings and we will see how that is translated into acts and then promoting and maintaining the memory of victims of the war and the dictatorship. It is necessary that citizens are aware of their own history to identify and deactivate the totalitarian leanings within its own society. That's important. That's why education is so important. It is important to understand how we reach democracy in our country through the sacrifice of many men and women who contributed to that and in that sense this law especially mentions four constitutions, the 1812 1869 constitutions this is an important fact to emphasize this 19th century because otherwise we believe that everything came about after 1945 and it's not the case and these places of memory these memory sites intend to compile all these locations that started appearing in the 19th century and we have devoted an international conference in the senate to the liberal triennium with an important publication this is going to be a large exhibition of the San Fernando Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Madrid which is related to this liberal triennium and the other constitution the other constitution that is compiled there is the 1931 constitution. We have had a big celebrations for these constitutions and for some of the main characters such as Azaña president of the Republic or Clara Campo Amor as one of the drafters defenders of feminine voting rights in our country and we have devoted an exhibition to Clara Campo Amor and and we've seen her statements in the congress and so on so the other constitution is the 1978 constitution it will turn 45 years of age next year and with the secretariat of state and with the courts we will have an artistic exhibition that has to do with all the rights that were conquered through the 1978 Spanish constitution looking at the European dimension we're also celebrating all the achievements across Europe and we will hold an exhibition next year on the relevant women who have contributed to making up the Europe we love today well our current Europe in this stage prior to 1978 we cannot forget the exiles that have already been mentioned here today we had a large exhibition in 2019 two exiles and there was another one in Malaga on this band it was one of these chapters it was similar to Guernica but a little bit earlier and in that link, linking up with Europe there is going to be in a few weeks time in Casa Separat there's going to be an exhibition on the Machausen meeting between Jews and Republicans in exile so there are different connections and in terms of archives and other levels we're working closely with France and with Portugal regarding our major projects we have the Documental Center for Memory it was created in 2007 it was promoted by the Spanish law on historical memory it compiles everything that has to do with the main characters, exiles groups and everything that was important and it is of free access universally available it includes all those documents that were classified before in 1968 this new law is also creating the Center for Democratic Memory to promote memory, democratic values and human rights and we also have additional projects that I don't have time to mention it is important though to underline that underline that we are touching on many different aspects related to culture with the Cervantes Institute we have a number of publications J. Sander we're also supporting the cinema and let me conclude in the same way as the Secretary of State about memory sites the new law on democratic memory promotes an inventory and compilation of these historical sites it intends to raise awareness of these sites and turn them into a national circuit the Council of Europe has several examples of interesting networks such as Atrium with the architecture of totalitarian regimes including Italy, Croatia, Romania, Bulgaria but I think this could also be extended we also have the route for the liberation of Europe as well as other routes but it seems that the south is not very organized for that another German word for monument, Tenkma which means think it is important because these sites need to make you think and there's a great controversy because among the important lists that raise the profile in the UNESCO list of human sites there's only two sites Auschwitz and the Bikini Atoll these are two very tough places but they have been turned into world heritage sites and this is a way to acknowledge that mankind has nice things such as the pyramids in Egypt although nobody tells you about how they were built because that's less interesting but it also has these other sites which are also important and there's a controversy because these sites the ICOM which is drafting the world heritage list it's not very clear about the indicators that need to be measured to award this important category that provides so much visibility to the sites and there's an ECOMOS report that has been commissioned for that and this report states that this is not world heritage and we need to change the mindset for that because these memory sites are also world heritage they are essential for education and I think that we all together through these networks that we will hear about now and other international and European networks we all need to make sure that culture is part of education and memory should be part of culture too thank you thank you Almodena thank you very much Almodena so whenever you have to leave just leave work, remembrance and solidarity with our dearest colleague Rafael Rogulski our dear colleague Rafael Rogulski who is the director of this network and we have the honor to collaborate with them for many years and the year that comes we will probably organize something together with you Rafael you have the word with the European network remembrance and solidarity and with some of our project especially those supported through through European commission so the European network remembrance and solidarity is an international entity supported the dialogue about history of 20th century the members of the network are countries especially Poland, Germany, Hungary, Romania and Slovakia those five countries are those who financed many of our activities, core activities of the network but we have also our advisory assemblies so called observators countries who have the status of the observator in the network and those are Austria, Czech Republic Latvia, Albania and Georgia and our main aim is to be a place for exchange between governmental civil society, academic and research organizations active in the field of 20th century history and its commemoration I'd like to underline also that UNRS is an international initiative that combines being a public and non-governmental entity we organized starting in 2010 almost 200 projects delivered in 27 countries mostly European countries UNRS is focused on research documentation especially on dissemination of knowledge about European 20th century history develops its long term activities in the five year perspective supported by the expertise and advice of its international advisory bodies for the years 2021 2025 we have defined five thematic priorities on which the UNRS action plan is based so the solidarity and resistance against undemocratic and inhuman powers anti-semitism migrations the end of the Cold War and reconciliation our target groups are you so the representatives of institutions and organizations dealing with the 20th century history culture managers, academics researchers, educators students and graduates you politicians and opinion leaders main activities are connected with delivering educational, academic and culture projects organizing conferences, symposia seminars and workshops publishing and translating works for academic as well as a general audience UNRS main partners are institutions in all over Europe and also some country behind Europe we have for almost 500 partnerships from almost 40 countries and those institutions are research and academic institutions for national remembrance archives memorials, cultural centers educational institutions but also government administrations unit and diplomatic missions consular offices and cultural institutes UNRS has a long time experience in implementing various EU and non-EU founded initiatives including Europe for Citizens three project grants International Visachrad and various other international and national grants program we are currently involved as a partner in a horizon Europe project consortium but the initiative with the most direct overlap with the mission and objectives of our organization in this years until 2027 probably also in the future is certainly self-programmed in 2021 we successfully applied also for two types of grants operating grant for 2022 as a part of a four year work partnership agreement and action grant in the field of European remembrance for our sound in the silence project self-objectives which include promoting citizens engagement and participation in the democratic life in the union and exchanges between citizens of different member states and rising awareness of their common European history are reflected in different ways in all of our projects moreover we collaborate with other organizations with a similar profile operating internationally like Eurom for example or House of European History or platform of European memory and conscience and with all those institutions in 2021 we organize a debate remembrance in action within the framework of the conference on the future of Europe now give me a chance to say something more to make you more familiar with some of our project the first is the European remembrance symposium our annually networking meeting is an example of project illustrating the specificity of our activities and their enlightenment with the objectives and principles of serve it brings together organizations with a similar profile operating nationally and internationally giving space for exchange of ideas experiences and giving also chance for future cooperation between them this year for example it was the anniversary event 10th edition took place in Trinity College in Dublin aim to discuss the meaning and role of reconciliation in the context of both historical and contemporary internal and international conflicts we had 35 panelist run table and panel discussions but also case studies presentation and for example turbo presentation we give one minute and a half for each speaker to present their own project sometimes the institution we have also always time for culture visits especially in other places characteristic for the place where we are and as you may imagine maybe the next location of the symposium will be Barcelona and we are actually we are preparing now the next year symposium so please feel being invited to come back to Barcelona between 10th and 12th of May is the plan is the plan is the plan but we will inform you via email about the exact date but the main topic will be solidarity we run also information campaigns the most important are those two International Holocaust Remembrance Day so 27th of January and remember August 23 the European Day of Remembrance for victims of totalitarian regimes and self-founding allowed us to expand the scope and outreach of those campaigns for example we were able to produce more films about victims of the different totalitarianism which we present on our web page but also especially also in different televisions and through different institutions on these dates and I'd like to present you 30 second film to give you how it can how it works, how we do this it will be about Doina Cornia the Romanian human rights activist it's not easy to admit that your world is not what it seems to be that your reality is made of lies it's a shock most people avoid as humans we prefer comfortable lies to difficult truths but once we see them for what they are there is no turning back I looked at a photo of churchesco surrounded by people but quite well, like a free man but the others some of them were sitting with their hands crossed others were grasping pens or hiding behind notebooks they had expressionless faces then I had my revelation how on earth have even our features changed it scared me it really scared me what is happening to us what is happening to us the Romanians Doina Cornia was a Romanian human rights activist her letters to radio for Europe showed the world the complexity and tragic fate of living under a communist totalitarian regime she was spied on and arrested mocked and persecuted but she remained true to herself her family, her students and her readers Cornia outlived the Romanian tyrant churchesco by 20 years but she was free long before he died and his regime fell she was free from the moment she saw the world as it truly was remember her we are struggling to remember victims of different totalitarian regimes if you are interested in such films they all are on our internet page and also on our youtube we can show you also another one also 30 seconds not so sad maybe for the evening this is not this I'm sorry we cannot do this now I wanted to show you a story of Jan Kroos an Estonian writer which is really powerful but we cannot do this now so I'm sorry but it is possible to see it on our website another project Sound in the Silence educational project prepared for young people from secondary school is an interdisciplinary remembrance project aimed at encouraging high school students to critically reflect on different aspects of the 20th century history and their importance for today's Europe through non-formal learning methods and artistic means of expression so we invite young people from four different countries through the recruitment process we look for teachers and history teachers who bring us this young people to the memory place so we invite them for example to former concentration camp like Guesen, Mauthausen, Guesen Auschwitz and those young people coming from different countries having different base we'll be confronting with the history of the place to prepare presentation, theater presentation performance together through artistic workshops they spent there at the place seven, eight days together in this year we through the ground thanks to the ground from the European Commission we have the possibility to make four editions instead two in normal situation in Kaunas 9th for the Museo Milithuania in Mauthausen-Guesen Memorial site in Austria and next year House of Wannsee Conference in Germany and Jasenowitz Memorial in Croatia so and I would like to end with some one minute okay I can skip this because these are opportunities and challenges for the SERF project we can discuss this later two minutes okay I'm sorry for making it so long so the first opportunity which gives us the SERF program is a project and organizations expansion if it is important for you as commission to expand to other institutions to be more visible I think that it could be considered quite high level of complexity involved in managing and operating ground or limits, requirements the need for time consuming and in depth legal and accounting consultations it is usable and doable as we do but it is it can be quite problematic for smaller institutions without so bigger possibilities like ours for example the second point benefits of cooperation with the other beneficiaries this is of course a crucial point not only of SERF program but also of all of our institutions but I have the feeling that there is not enough opportunities for such meeting and workshops beneficiaries and the European commission to exchange experiences and best practices in already running projects but also new ideas and new partnerships there is a significant potential for synergy both as progression from one program to the other but also from mutually reinforcing with the other while working in the same thematic areas point 3 EU addressing the Russian invasion of Ukraine at various levels including SERF programming documents a crucial step considering how timely the issues of remembrance and history are these days how important it is for understanding the complexity of the current political situation and its implications for our national and European identities our experience with partners from other non-EU countries such as Georgia or Albania or Serbia prove their importance and strong presence in the international dialogue with the EU perhaps it would be worth considering increasing the eligibility of the activities for non-EU citizens run outside the EU but of course clearly linked to program objectives and not violating any grand rules of course limiting the activities to implement only the EU in the EU and last point a strong emphasize on ongoing monitoring actions aimed at measuring the impact for our project in both short and long term this is very important point also for us but the main tool used by European commission to measure the impact of the program is the justice rights and values survey which is more concentrated on those value than on the project itself and actually not gives us direct feedback on the beneficiaries regarding the quality and effectiveness of our actions it is the end of my presentation thank you very much thank you thank you very much Rafael thank you for the presentation of your activities but also for bringing on the table some important issues let's say for beneficiary well now it's finally thank you for waiting to Morgan and Zely our colleagues from Memorial de la Shoah in Paris Morgan Nepper and Zely Dahl will explain a bit what they are doing from their organization merci beaucoup okay thank you good evening everyone so my name is Morgan Nepper I work at the Memorial de la Shoah in Paris so I will be briefly presenting our institution for those who don't know us and then we have a focus on our European training program and on the work we do regarding a victim database so the origins of the Memorial date back from to the Second World War with the creation of documentation center Centre de documentation juive contemporaine in 1943 the idea was to already during the war gather all the evidence of anti-Jewish persecution in order to bear witness and demand justice after the war so this is what happened actually the documents were used during trials, for example so later in the 50s the documentation center participated in the building of a monument in Europe dedicated to the memory of the 6 million Jews murdered during the Holocaust and then the Memorial de la Shoah as we know it today was created in 2005 so on the 4th court of the Memorial you have a wall who is erecting the names of 76,000 Jews deported from France from 1942 to 1944 within the Memorial flame burns in memory of the victims in our crypt and also outside the Memorial you will find a wall of the righteous righteous among the nations so name after those who risked their life to save Jews during the war so the Memorial is still today the leading information center on the subject in Europe and continues to document its document collection activity on a daily basis but it's also now a museum hosting a permanent exhibition and also temporary exhibition each year cultural events it's still a cover center open to researchers but also a place of remembrance where commemoration takes place all year round so it's a place dedicated to the transmission of memory it offers educational activities for all ages and sensitivities so we host many schools all year round we have guided tours workshops study trips so we share knowledge about the Holocaust but also we address issues like anti-Semitism racism conspiracy theories all kind of subject finally we are going to have training for teachers and also for various trades like for the police for the judges for the journalists and many other trades we also have developed citizenship course for perpetrators of racist and anti-Semitic offenses and partnership with course of appeal but the memorial is not only in Paris nowadays it's also open a museum in 2005 in the suburb of Paris in Trancy where there will be an internment camp and also the memorial has entities all over France in the French regions and a regional branch in Toulouse which allows really us to work on the transmission of also local histories and local memories regarding our presence in Europe our European dimension has really grown over the last years thanks to the support of the European Commission with whom we have framework partnerships under the self-program we train teachers in Europe and also students in over 20 countries but my colleagues really will present this more in details and we also cycle of trainings and summer schools for teachers in Poland, Germany also in Israel and in memorial sites we have also a correspondent in Italy where we develop many activities trainings, partnerships exhibitions and then now I will leave my colleagues to present our European training projects thank you can I share my screen I don't think you can sit down my hope is working hello everyone, thank you for giving us the opportunity to present our activities thank you everyone for welcoming us I'm Zelya and I'm working at the international relations department I will try to be brief so first of all I'd like to introduce the active Holocaust legacy program which includes actually two main programs the first is Holocaust as a starting point which is a teacher training and the second one is called never again really which is aimed for students so this is a student's training a transnational student training first of all I'd like to answer the question why we created those two programs so first Holocaust is a European legacy and bound the countries together we observe that Europe is facing actually several and simultaneous tension social, economical, political and now military threats and two main observations now some tension are closely linked to the World War II it's clear when Putin say something like he's fighting back against Neo-Nazi when he talked about Ukrainian people the also classification of history is a new tool to challenge democracies and we assisted in February to the military translation of this classification of history from that perspective we intended to shape this program to take the Holocaust as a common starting point to address current tension for Europe, for relevant projects and to tackle Holocaust and history distortion I listed some few main goals we have in mind so the first one and maybe the most important one is we are trying to build communities of teachers, of coordinators but also we intend to create communities of students since we are creating this new program never again really on the second hand we aim to strengthen academic, scientific knowledge and to put back scientific rational narratives into broader historical and political debates by giving tools to the teacher and the students to face the threat of anti-Semitism, Holocaust distortion pacification of history conspiracy theories and so on here you can see the several seminars we will organize in 1923 helped by the European Commission so the first one I talked to was the Holocaust at the starting point which is a teacher training and I'd like to highlight that we never select countries randomly we actually intend to gather countries which are all a common heritage in terms of negative history this would be the case of France and Germany for instance or we intend to gather countries having tension between each other due to conflicting memory so that would be the case of Greece and Bulgaria but also the program never again really with Romania and Hungary having this tension about this Hungarian minorities in the Trianon treaties for instance very briefly also I'd like to show you how we we tipped the program so for the teacher we gather 50 teachers from two or three different countries and we offer a program made of a balance between historical lecture and pedagogical workshop and finally we also we also want to introduce the local history for site visits but they're never again really program it's slightly different so we also aim to target 50 students from two different countries in this case Hungary and Romania but this will be the very first edition in 2023 and we hope later on if it's a success to develop more activity on the same shape that never again really the program is also different from the teacher training because it's thought as an intellectual survival kit for understanding mass atrocities and genocide in its historical and legal dimension and by by that we also intend to give like a basic knowledge of understanding the geopolitics tension at the moment for future political leaders or future educational leaders what are the goals for the stakeholders we aim again I insist on this but we aim on creating a community of teachers and students among Europe to facilitate good practice new transnational projects and to strengthen scientific knowledge to fight back the classification of history and submit them focus distortion conspiracy theories and by that we also aim to strengthen European values and to strengthen basic values of democracy I focus on the challenges we we define three main challenges at the moment we think it's necessary to involve the EU candidates countries in our program because they are facing the same threats than the countries part of the EU and we're really concerned as you could see by history specification and think that it request the greatest attention and mobilization of the remembrance stakeholders among Europe and finally we think like we could be more efficient on the ground by by includes a better inclusion of people in charge of the manual and curricula because they have more the hands of the possibility of under curricula scholar sorry conclusion and that's all for me thank you I think Morgan will complete by presenting the victim database now thanks so yeah I wanted to to talk briefly about victim database since this is a subject you will be discussing in the next days and we won't be present for the discussion so I will just give you an overview of what we do at the memo and what we do at the memo and what we do at the what we do at the memo as an example so maybe next slide so our document our documentation center has been working on the indexing of names since its creation it was first a list then become a digital database the objectives was originally to help people be reinstated in their rights and to obtain compensation but today the documentation center manages a nominative database which includes around 99,000 names of victims and 180 names of what we call authorities names who are mentioned in the documents so you can search by name or by document using our data report tool which will provide access to all the information on the person so this database is still updated on a daily basis and we have maybe one specificity the memoria is very transparent about what it published and all names must have several sources to be present in the database we need to cross all our sources maybe the next slide just to show you what it looks like so you can search either a person or document then you will arrive if you take the example of simon jacob next slide you can see that you have all the information on this person when she was also deported her identification and next slide all the documents and mentions you will find in our archive so in the films, photographs documents everything is on the same page which allows really researchers and also families and all people coming to the memorial to do their research one challenge we have in France compared maybe to other countries it's that the French law does not allow us to publish information on person without their consent so some documents if we have the consent will be accessible online some other documents you will have to come to the memorial to look at them so yeah, that's it about the database just to conclude with our perspective regarding those topics we have talked about regarding the database we have an exciting ongoing project creating digital monuments for which we screen the name of other victims what we call the victims which means those were not deported so this monument will be in our crypt as a memory object and it will be directly linked to our database and will be automatically updated on a daily basis regarding our work on remembrance we have also an exciting new project creating this European network of remembrance young ambassadors so just witnesses are really part of our work at the memorial was a lot a lot on witnesses and survivors and at a time now where they are disappearing we need to rethink and find other ways to ensure that the history of the Holocaust is shared and remembered and for that we can also mobilize our youth in Europe so just to give you an overview the memorial has been coordinating a network of ambassadors a national network since 2015 which with the the network brings together now 13 institutions who are backed by an historic site and linked to the history of the Holocaust during World War II so it aims to promote knowledge and transmission of the history of the Holocaust at a national and also local level contributing to the affirmation of democratic values and particularly in the fight against all forms of racism and anti-Semitism so the network relies on young ambassadors remembered ambassadors who are responsible for carrying out the history and the mission of the place of remembrance they represent so from next year we will be building on this successful experience in France and initiate the development of similar but much bigger network in Europe so that these young people we will be able to carry the memory this memory and the memory of these places they are linked to and be fully engaged in the process of reflection and transmission also so that's it thank you Morgan and Zely for being reachable online and well see you next time maybe in Paris so now the time finally thank you for your patience Steven Stiggers who is the Executive Director of EuroCLIO which is the European Association of History Educators which is one of the organizations who is most focused on historical the transmission of historical knowledge to address present issues Steven the floor is yours so I'm working for EuroCLIO the European Association of History Educators it's a it's a big community so we have educators from all over Europe we actually have members from all the EU member states but also beyond yeah what we do is we organize training we develop educational materials we do research we do advocacy and what I always find nice is that people are really passionate I say I always work with the lucky teachers because they are going above and beyond like later to spend in the weekend to exchange experiences and I think what drives them is the potential of history education because I mean it can be taught in a way that is quite boring like just the facts the names, memorization but it can also be a wonderful subject when it's really about asking critical questions when students are challenged to do their own research when they have to form their own opinions and ultimately they also then recognize misuses of history resist manipulation so if you look at the world where there's fragility of democracy where there's also a lot of apathy actually people who are not caring or disinformation stereotypes I think all of these things you can look back at history and see what kind of world do we want to have in the future so how to achieve that but then you need to have education that's active and fun inquiry based that you have like questions that students also become curious I think the best museum visits for example are the ones where you walk away with questions rather than just say okay I now really know everything and it should be experiential because we know that then you really remember and empowering for students so how does that look like so that also means that students become active producers of history so this is one peer learning tutorial where students are actually making their own stories and are sharing and here you can see that people are really working with for example professional cameras this is somebody who's doing like work that she likes and we have amazing educators in our network who don't do this and I just selected but I wanted to show that the people behind the network are global but I could put of course many many more so I wanted now to jump into the topic of this conference which was about the victim databases so I think as a history educator representative I wanted to show about the educational potential and the first thing that I thought about these databases is also it's a lot it's a lot does anyone know where this photo is from? it's from Auschwitz exactly I was looking for an image to sort of say okay what represent these millions of victims who are in a way are to an extent nameless and you have that also with some memorials like the memorial of all the names I also went to the Vietnam memorial for example in the US we now have in the Netherlands names Holocaust memorial and these are the numbers that basically were put like on the tattoos from the Holocaust but behind those numbers behind those names there are always the personal stories and I think that's also a hook to get people interested it's about keeping the memory alive and to make it more tangible because I think that is a major challenge especially the victims who don't have like the relatives who really are at risk of being forgotten or perhaps not represented of the main victim groups how do you like remember them and this is one of the examples the stumbling stones I think many of you will be familiar but of course this puts makes it very tangible the world people will live here in this place and the case study that we have here is a contested histories project we've been mapping contested histories all over the world we now have more than 500 cases and for more or less 100 we've already identified what was the contestation about so if you look at contestedhistories.org then you can find them and you can see the people disagree about these contested histories and even the stumbling blocks are actually contested because some people say I don't want this to be the front of my house because I will be reminded every day what happened here that there was a family who like was deported and who died and of course the race is also interesting debates because it's very often mentioned as a very good example but we also have to respect the homes of the people but how do you then do that because on the one hand it needs to be a dialogue very often with the permission of the people who live there and some other difficult questions such as do you have the right to commemorate these were some real dilemmas that we had in Buchenwald Memorial we had the pleasure of that was actually the first project we did with the Europe for Citizens Remembrance Program like Otto Koch he was the mayor of Weimar during the Nazi times and he became a victim later when the camp was used under the communist regime and the family members of Otto Koch said okay we want to have a private commemoration for him because he was our father and we loved him but he was also a Nazi perpetrator in a way you can't be the mayor of Weimar and not be complicit in the crimes that were committed so what do you then do are you allowing a memorial how big should it be you have these sort of the private commemoration and you have the official commemoration that's very complex so what we usually do with Euroclio is we turn that into a question we don't say okay well we thought deeply about it and now we know it and your students are going to learn now actually put the dilemma in the shoes of the students the example that you can see on the other hand is like how do you name that it's a a ribbon it's a ribbon and that was actually from the granddaughter of another like official who basically said found out that her grandfather committed a lot of crimes and she said okay I miss you as a grandfather because you were lovely for me as a grandfather but knowing now I wish you had done something differently so I think things like this show the complexity it brings in the humanity and I think those are very powerful tools in the end to enable students to think about these complex issues when it's about empowering and also giving a face I think this is an excellent example there were some students who were actually going to the war graves and we would adopt some of the graves to give them a face to do research to find out who are the people so that she take them out of anonymity and any memorial that has names or numbers or any database you can actually replicate that and in this case they presented their research findings it was published in the local newspaper so you can also see what we do is connected with the real world and people are interested in it so you can publish I think it's a real story one example was a workshop that I had 10 years ago at the Poland Museum it was a learning resource developed by the Faustat Center and the Jewish Museum and what they did was actually to trace back the story of one person and they combined all the archival footage from different places and that's also what you can do with these victim databases if you have the name one archive is very often especially if people moved from like across Europe and they have some wonderful transnational stories where you can also say because people do move and then you go from one place to another from one archive to another and they actually were challenged to combine all of this footage some research questions and then they would present this in a blog post but I think the methodology is quite good what we're doing now ourselves is we do a project with the Max Mannheimer Study Center we have a project with one inquiry questions who were the victims of the National Socialists in the past but also in the present and of course there were Jewish people but there were also Roma and Sinti there were also people actually we now have 21 pagers with the different victim groups so it is actually an impossible question to answer and even if you think about like the people for example who were now not born and if you think about all the there's a lot but the beautiful thing is this is always in the curriculum and there's always something that you can research locally and in this case I don't have the time now to show it but they created peer learning tutorials where they can look at each other and say learn not from the teachers but actually learn from students in other countries to find out what they did to go to the archives to go to the museum and also how they shared the material so I promise to stick to 10 minutes so I will stop my presentation here but it gives just some ideas about the victim databases I think in the end the key is find out where the stories are and let students do their own research thank you thank you for your enlightening presentation and brief at the same time