The educational project „The Holocaust in Central and Eastern Europe: History and Legacy“ developed a course on the History and Legacy of the Holocaust in Central and Eastern Europe that allows students to understand the diverging legacy of the events in the east and in the west of Europe, serves as a key to comperative perspectives across cases of genocial violence and allows to gain valuable insights for the future.

In Germany, the Holocaust continues to be perceived by a large number of students as a matter of German history. While the role of the Nazis in the Holocaust should by no means be downplayed, it is important to realise that the majority of those who were killed during the Holocaust lived in Central and Easter Europe. The worst aspects of these events, from mass shootings to the death camps, took place of were located in this region as well. In order to make sense of what happened in the societies most of the victims came from and among which they were killed. This is key to understanding the diverging legacy of these events in the east and in the west of Europe. It is also the key to allowing for comperative perspectives across cases of genocidal violence and gaining valuable insights for the future.

The project „The Holocaust in Central and Easter Europe: History and Legacy“ reflected this recognition in academic education. It created and offered an innovative and well-structured bi-ingual course for teaching the history of Holocaust to students at the University of Augsburg.

In advance, course instructors Prof. Dr. Maren Röger and Dr. Gaëlle Fisher did an additional training travelling to Moldova and Transnistria where the majority of Romanian victims of the Holocaust were deported and died. The main aim of this trip was to enable them to gain a better understanding of the events and the region in which they took place. This trip enabled them to cover the route taken by deportees from Bukovina and Bessarabia themselves, from Chisinau to Attaki and Moghilev and across the Dniester to Sharhorod, Vinnytsia and Bershad. While the Holocaust in Romania remains a vastly under-researched and unknown chapter of the Holocaust, it is also the key to understanding how genocide can happen in general.

Furthermore, the project acquired materials for the teaching of the course, that are now availabe at the library of Bukovina-Institute at Augsburg University. By this, the library´’s collection of books on the subject of the Holocaust in Romanian or German language has been widened with some of the most-recent English language publications on the subject as well as some older key works. The aquisation of books encompassed essential and further reading directly relevant to the suggested course with its regional focus.