On 3 April 2017, EuroClio had the honour to launch its new Historiana unit called ‘Silencing Citizens through Censorship’ at its 24th EuroClio Annual Conference in Donostia-San Sebastian. The launch ceremony has been attended by more than 130 people from 33 countries across the world.
The unit offers ready to use engaging and thought-provoking resources on striking historical examples of censorship during the dictatorial and totalitarian regimes in Europe through the collection, multi-perspective sources and innovative methodologies. This learning unit explores European history to help students understand how censorship worked, what the effect was on ordinary people and what this means for societies today in which free information and power continue to be entangled.
This unit came into live as a result of the EuroClio project ‘Silencing Citizens through Censorship. Learning from Europe’s 20th-Century Dictatorial & Totalitarian Past’. This project involved a transnational group of history and citizenship educators from EuroClio’s member Associations in France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Macedonia, Poland, and Spain in the development and implementation of students-driven projects on censorship in Europe’s 20th century dictatorial and totalitarian regimes.
The new unit offers historical context on different aspects of censorship in Franco’s Spain (1936 – 1975), Vichy France (1940 – 1945), Nazi Germany (1933-1945), Mussolini’s Italy (1922 – 1943), the post-1945 Hungarian ( – 1990) and Polish Republics (1944 – 1989) and the Republic of Macedonia as part of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia under Tito (1945 – 1980). In addition to this, the country cases chosen have all been captured in timeline of ten essential turning points, or key moments. By showing these key moments in a comparative timeline, students are able to look at developments across different places and times, and draw conclusions on connections between certain events.
Learning activities, teaching strategies and source collections are available within the chapters of ‘Censorship in action’, ‘Heritage of censorship’ and ‘The bigger picture’ of the unit.
We welcome you to view the new HISTORIANA unit ‘Silencing Citizens through Censorship’ and encourage you to use it in practice or disseminate among your interested public.
