The Centropa Summer Academy took place in Budapest and Belgrade from July 9 to 16. This is an annual Summer Academy for teachers from different countries, organized since 2007. This year teachers from 16 countries participated.
The largest delegation was from the US, with 21 teachers. Teachers from Lithuania also participated in the Summer Academy: Vaida Jankūnienė (Radviliškis Lizdeikos gymnasium) and Arnoldas Riekumas (Vilnius Naujamiesčio School).
In Budapest, they visited the Dohany Street Synagogue, The Shoes on the Danube Promenade Memorial, and the Holocaust Memorial Center, met with members of the Budapest Jewish community who survived the Holocaust, and attended Shabbat services. Lectures were also given on Hungarian history, events in the country after World War II, communism in Hungary, and Hungarian life after the fall of communism.
On the way to Belgrade, in Subotica, the participants visited a renovated synagogue, one of the best-preserved examples of Art Nouveau religious architecture.
In Belgrade, participants took part in a tour of Jewish Belgrade before World War II, visited Staro Sajmiste, the former site of an international exhibition and fair, which was converted into a concentration camp during the German occupation, and visited the Jewish cemetery.
The program was very intense, but the experiences of teaching about the Holocaust in schools, the dissemination and methodology of the teaching materials collected by Centropa, new meetings and future international projects, and the dissemination of good practices are extremely important in all countries today.
