All over the world

14 Jul 2022 - by Alexander Niederhuber

Alexander Niederhuber is a Stories that Move trainer based at the education agency erinnern.at/OeAD in Austria, where he works with Holocaust survivors.

One of the survivors with whom I work is Kurt Rosenkranz. He was born in 1927 to Jewish parents in Vienna where he still lives. In 1989, Kurt Rosenkranz founded the Jewish Institute for Adult Education and began an active career as an adult educator. He participates in the witnesses programme of _erinnern.at_ and regularly visits schools.

Kurt Rosenkranz ©OeAD APA-Fotoservice Rastegar

In 1938 he experienced the “Anschluss” – Austria’s annexation to Nazi Germany. In the same year, the family fled to Riga (Latvia). After the occupation by the Soviet Union, the family was deported to a Soviet prison camp. In 1946 the family returned to Vienna.

Working with personal stories is a key element of the work _erinnern.at_. We see how it inspires young people to learn about the past and reflect on the meaning of these stories for today.

The personal stories young people share are essential to Stories that Move, a project that has excited and fascinated me from the very first second I joined. I believe the toolbox is a valuable contribution to the educational landscape in Europe and beyond, and makes the increasingly important topics of racism and discrimination easier for teachers to address in the classroom.

StM’s courses with teachers, both face-to-face and online, help connect educators far and wide, allowing direct feedback and priceless situations of exchange. Experiences are shared. A very special experience for me, as a trainer, were the webinars on using the tool held with the Anne Frank Zentrum in Berlin, in which participants from all over the world took part at the same time. Working together with teachers from Singapore, Argentina and Bulgaria, as well as in France, Austria and Germany was an incredibly motivating experience, because it showed what outreach StM already has and that the toolbox is being used all over the world!

To see how StM contributes to depolarisation and better mutual understanding in classrooms, and to hear from teachers how they have used the toolbox and that it makes their lives easier, is a great reward for the effort we are putting into the project. We are now introducing the toolbox to more and more institutions, schools and teachers, to inspire as many people as possible with the project.