3rd edition of the Italian University in Berlin

Organized by the Shoah Memorial in partnership with six German institutions, the seminar offered participants the opportunity to deepen their knowledge of the history of the crimes of National Socialism through a rich program of lectures, educational workshops, debates and guided tours in various memorials commemorating the victims of the Third Reich (the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, the Memorial of the former Sachsenhausen concentration camp and the Berlin-Schöneweide forced labor camp) and in emblematic places of Nazism (the Topography of Terror, the Wannsee Conference House and the German Resistance Memorial).

The topics discussed, in an informal context facilitating dialogue and exchanges, have sparked a lively debate about how the history of this period is apprehended and taught in Italy: anti-Semitism in Weimar Germany and under Hitler’s regime, the implementation of the Final Solution, the memory of National Socialism in contemporary Germany, individual resistance against the regime. The program of the University also helped to stimulate a collective reflection on the memorial process of the history of deportation in Italy (more than four hundred Italians were imprisoned in Sachsenhausen) and forced labor whose gigantic scale (about 26 million people were victims of this criminal practice) is an essential element in the history of the Second World War, even though it is still a crime that has been very little studied and taught in schools. In this context, the visit to Sachsenhausen and the Berlin-Schöneweide forced labor camp, as well as a temporary exhibition dedicated to the 650,000 Italian soldiers captured by the German army after 8 September 1943, allowed participants to develop a new approach to these events and to find in the new exhibitions presented many educational opportunities to take up these topics in class with their students.

If the architectural and urban landscape of Berlin represented the ideal context to enrich throughout the seminar the reflection on the relationship between history, politics and memory in Germany, leading to comparisons with the Italian panorama, One of the highlights of the program was the meeting with the heads of museums and visited memorials who made their educational resources available to participants.

In partnership with:

• Haus der Wansee-Konferenz Gedenk-und Bildungsstätte / House of the Wannsee Conference Memorial and Educational Site
• Daugiaux Center NS-Raisinging Berlin-Schöneweide (Berlin-Schöneweide Nazi Forced Labor Documentation Center)
• Stiftung Topographie des Terrors / Topography of Terror Foundation – with the: The Nazi Forced Labour Documentation Centre in Berlin-Schöneweide
• Stiftung Denkmal für die housedeten Juden Europas/Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe and Information Center
• Straw House/ The German Resistance Memorial Center
• Arranged Packaging und Museum Sachsenhausen / Sachsenhausen Memorial und Museum