Europe’s East, the Second World War, and the Holocaust

The aim of the resources presented here is to help teachers and students embed the experiences of the Second World War and the Holocaust in Europe’s East – especially in Ukraine, Poland and Romania – into their teaching and learning.

Researchers: Professor Sara Jones (PI), Dr Sarah Hall, Dr Julian Hoerner, Dr Maryna Rusanova, Dr Ewa Tartakowsky, Dr Isabel Wollaston

There are two competitions associated with the resources, one for students over the age of 16 in secondary-level education in any country, and one for teachers or teachers-in-training in the UK.

1. Student competition

Students over the age of sixteen in secondary-level education in any country are invited to submit a “creative cartography” based on one or more of the following three events:

Massacre at Babyn Yar in 1941
Warsaw Ghetto uprising in 1943
Deportations of Jews and Sinti and Roma from Romania

You can find out more about these events and about creative cartography in the short video below (available in English, Romanian, Ukrainian and Polish).

Further information and links to images and testimonies can be found in the teacher resources linked below. Please note that many of the images included in the video and linked in the resources were taken by the Nazis and should be approached sensitively. We encourage a creative response to remembrance, rather than creating art as if you have direct experience of the events of the Holocaust and Second World War.

You can submit your cartography in any medium or language and should include with it a 200-word explanation of your project in English, Romanian, Ukrainian or Polish.

The competition opens on 19 April 2024 and closes on 27 January 2025. Teachers are encouraged to support their students in the production of their submissions. The entries will be judged by an international panel of experts and selected entries will be published on this website.

Please submit your entries to transnationeducationholocaust@gmail.com by 27 January 2025.

2. Teacher Competition

Teachers or those training to be teachers are invited to submit a short lesson plan based on one of the resources linked below, each of which covers a particular event in Europe’s East during the Second World War. The resources are not intended to be comprehensive, and each includes links to further reading, lesson ideas, images and testimonies. The lesson plan should be no more than two sides and submitted in English.

The competition opens on 19 April 2024 and closes on 27 January 2025. The entries will be judged by a panel of experts and selected entries will be published on the website. The top two winning entries will have the opportunity to undertake an internship at the National Holocaust Centre and Museum in the summer of 2025.

The Holocaust in Europe’s East

The Second World War in Europe’s East

The Katyn Massacre

Please submit your entries to transnationeducationholocaust@gmail.com by 27 January 2025.

The teacher materials build on the work of four College of Arts and Law Collaborative Research Interns who worked with us in the summer of 2023. Many thanks to Lydia Eedy (Art Created in Labour Camps and Ghettos and Babyn Yar Massacre), Charlotte Grace (Ukrainian Nationalism and the Katyn Massacre), Isabel Locke (Treblinka Uprising and Deportations from Romania), and Marlena Wierzchowska (Warsaw Ghetto Uprising). The design work on the videos and resources was completed by Oxana Bischin who also supplied Romanian subtitles and translations.

Our research

The resources presented here build on the research project Antisemitism in Post-Migrant Britain, funded by the College of Arts and Law, the cross-country collaboration Antisemitism and Holocaust Education in Transnational Perspective, funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council Impact Acceleration Account, and discussions in the COST-funded network on Slow Memory. You can find out more about this work in this video - Antisemitism and Slow Memory.