Seven students, future lawyers, historians, designers, linguists and sociologists, have joined the project in Grodno. It’s worth mentioning that among the participants there is one «non-humanist»: a student of the Medical University, for whom the history of her hometown is a favourite hobby.
On the first day of the introductory seminar, which took place in the office of Grodno’s project partner, the NGO «Third Sector Center», the participants became acquainted with each other and other participants from Chişinau and Chernivtsi during a Google Meetings session.
The director of the Jewish-Christian dialogue centre «Shomer International», Yauhen Kalodzin, spoke about the Holocaust monuments that had being erected in Belarus after the end of World War II. Yauhen noted that in Soviet times, most initiatives to perpetuate the memory of fallen Jews came to nothing due to flourishing bureaucracy and anti-Semitic policies. You can find evidence of this fact in the example of the Museum of the Great Patriotic War, where only one exhibit is dedicated to the Holocaust. During the period of independent Belarus, Jewish communities have managed to improve the situation in this sphere. Many memorial signs and plaques have been put up with governmental assistance from Germany, a country where support for Holocaust memorialization forms part of a repentance policy.
