Last Summer, from 30 August until 1 September, history teachers from Bulgaria and the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia met in Skopje for the joint educational seminar “The Holocaust as a starting point: comparing and sharing”. Through sharing academic approaches in teaching and getting a better understanding of the history of the Holocaust, teachers from both countries discovered new common grounds.

The seminar was organized by the Holocaust Memorial Center for the Jews from Macedonia and Memorial de la Shoah, based in France.  And EuroClio is very glad that its member organisations from Bulgaria (Bulgarian History Teachers’ Association) and Macedonia (History Teachers’ Association of Macedonia) enabled the event by mobilising their members and cherishing EuroClio’s methodology. Within the seminar two pedagogical workshops on new forms of antisemitism in social media and how to deal with racial prejudice were held, as well as discussions on the history of antisemitism, the Holocaust in Europe and remembrance culture. Participants also had a chance to visit Monopol, the tobacco factory from where more than 7,000 Macedonian Jews were deported to Treblinka in 1943.

Due to the success of this seminar, the newly discovered commonalities regarding the Second World War and well-received workshops, a second joint seminar will be held in Bulgaria in 2018. For more information about the cooperation, please contact Bistra Stoimenova and Mire Mladenovski or Memorial de la Shoah directly.