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As part of the 2024 annual focus of the OeAD program ERINNERN:AT on the genocide of Roma and Sinti, a new digital learning module was created that deals with the continuities of antiziganism in Germany and Austria after 1945. The activity was created as part of a long-standing university cooperation between Austria, Germany and Switzerland, specifically in the course of the educational platform “LEBENSGESCHICHTEN”.
“LEBENSGESCHICHTEN” is the German-language project page of the educational platform IWitness, which was developed as a cooperation between the Lucerne University of Teacher Education, the University of Teacher Education St. Gallen, the University of Flensburg and the OeAD program ERINNERN:AT in Austria. The core of the learning offer are so-called “activities” (currently 18 in number), which are based on video interviews with survivors of the Holocaust and other genocides from the Visual History Archive of the USC Shoah Foundation. The trinational project contributes to the development of an elaborate historical awareness and the promotion of historical and political education among pupils in the DACH region. Pupils, students and those working in school and extracurricular education form the primary target group of the learning offer.
The focus of the new activity is on different forms of legal and social discrimination and stigmatisation of Roma and Sinti, especially from the period after 1945. Learners acquire basic factual skills in relation to continuities of antiziganism as well as methodological skills in dealing with different kinds of sources, especially with videotaped survivor interviews.
Self-directed learning and the use of digital learning opportunities can have a motivating effect on the learning process. As far as the sustainable implementation of the learning opportunities is concerned, the transfer into school practice must be ensured, by means of nationwide courses at teacher training institutions. A further desideratum is an empirical evaluation – there are still only a few findings on the lasting effect of survivor interviews in the classroom. Trinational qualitative teaching research projects would therefore be desirable.
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