Hamburg visits Berlin: pondering about the meaning of memorials

Our project with two groups of children from a school in Hamburg has almost come to an end. We visited four memorials in Berlin: those for the Jews, the Roma and Sinti, the homosexuals and the handicapped people. In Hamburg we already prepared these visits by explaining what happened with these people and how the Nazis justified this. We prepared these histories by discussing at length discrimination, racism, anti-Semitism, sexism, homophobia, and fundamental values like democracy, freedom and respect. In Berlin we concentrated on questions like “Why and for whom are these memorials built? “What interpretations of the monuments could be given?” and “Are the monuments effective in communicating a message?” We will now evaluate the surveys we conducted and report on this evaluation and our other observations soon. We thank the children and respect-coach Özlem Tiras-Hazer for the great cooperation.

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