United We StandResistance and courage as fundamental European values?The 30 Polish participants (15 male and 15 female) are high school students at The Hotel and Restaurant Management and Home Economics Department of the Powiatowy Zespol Szkol Ponadgimnazjalnych im Jerzego Siwinskiego in Legionowo, Poland.The 30 German participants (15 male and 15 female) are students at the Börde-Berufskolleg, a vocational college in Soest (Germany) leading to A-level diplomas with a focus on Health and Social Studies, especially Educational Studies.Both groups of students will work together on topics of Polish and German commemorative culture.The students are 17 to 20 years old and are studying to receive diplomas that will enable them to enlist in universities or other colleges of higher education. Furthermore the students are gaining knowledge and insight into their future professions.Resistance has manifested itself in various important events in both German and Polish history, including e.g. the uprising in the Warsaw Ghetto, The Warsaw uprising, the Solidarity movement, the “Edelweißpiraten” in the Ruhrgebiet, 20 July 1944 and the peaceful revolution in 1989. These events create the background for intensive discussion about common European ideals and values of the past, present and future. They show the interdependency of developments regarding e.g. the Solidarity movement and the peaceful revolution in East Germany in 1989.Places of commemoration, that represent these events as symbols of an eventful past, can be didactic such as ghetto walls, meeting points where prisoners were transferred to camps and ghettos, Pawiak, Hohenschönhausen, Plötzensee, Steinwache etc. Students participating in the Erasmus+ project will have a unique opportunity to explore and work in these places which involve key aspects of their respective professions. It is intended that the students will gain insight to new professional perspectives or activity in the context of commemorative culture and thus be confronted with possible job plans or university careers.Hence this Erasmus+ project is closely connected to the program “No exam without continuity”, established by the federal state of North Rhine-Westphalia.To grasp the magnitude of the key sites of remembrance it is mandatory to personally see and experience these places.This in turn justifies the project-related mobility we are about to carry out in the future.Also, we strongly believe that our approach will result in an exceptionally authentic experience encouraging our students to experience, analyze and to plan the potential activities we are embarking on.Furthermore, our students should be able to put their newly acquired knowledge into practice by reflecting and implementing their professional expertise on a particular topic with which we will be dealing.Thus, this acquisition of practical knowledge should lead to a vast number of products including video and photo documentations, flyers promoting educational trips, radio broadcasts, exhibitions as well as job profiles with the compulsory skills needed within this field.We are strongly convinced that our approach will generate a huge impact on the variety of perspectives on history, especially on those historical issues both countries have had in common in the course of the 20th century. Our students will be therefore encouraged to recognize the importance of common values and fundamental rights shared not only by these two countries but also by all members of the European Union.With our project contributing to a deeper understanding between Poland and Germany we are not only aiming to strengthen sustainable European ties between both nations but also to avoid prejudices by means of greater awareness.In the long run, our primary objective is to develop convictions and courage among our students to defend basic values such as the importance of man’s fundamental rights, the protection of human dignity and respect especially in situations when asserting those rights and values might require courage to stand up for one’s beliefs.
Resistance - a European ideal? The 20 (10+10) pupils of the hospitality industry and the nutrition and housekeeping of the Powiatowy Zespol Szkol Ponadgimnazjalnych in Jerzego Siwinskiego and the 20 (10+10) pupils of the Berufliches Gymnasium "Gesundheit und Soziales, Fachlicher Schwerpunkt Pädagogik" of the Börde-Berufskolleg of the Kreis Soest in Soest worked together within the framework of the Polish-German remembrance culture. After completion and follow-up of the previous project "On the tracks of Janusz Korczaks/Gedenkstättenpädagogik" it became clear in the reflection that another central field of work is the intensive confrontation with the ideals of resistance in Germany and Poland. This idea was the starting point for this project. Since the cooperation with the Polish partners ran smoothly, a continuation of the work with the school in Legionowo was obvious. The pupils of both schools are between 16 and 20 years old and, in addition to general study skills at universities and universities of applied sciences, aim to acquire in-depth professional knowledge through their degrees. By dealing with central events (e.g. German occupation, Warsaw ghetto, resistance under National Socialism, Solidarnosc movement) the students build up a sound understanding of the overall development of Poland, Germany and the whole of Europe. These events provide the background for an intensive examination of the common European goods and values of the past, present and future and show the interdependence of the developments. The pupils learn that resignation and passivity and adaptation can be overcome even in times of existential threat and endangerment, but that this may mean a danger to their own lives. In this way the participants acquire qualifications that enable them to participate in the political life of society. Central didactic approaches for all these events are places of remembrance that symbolize the past in highly concentrated form and authentically depict it. (Ghetto wall, exploration of the old town of Warsaw as a testimony of destruction and reconstruction, transshipment point, Pawiak and Aleja Szucha, Hohenschönhausen, Plötzensee, Steinwache, etc.) Within the framework of this Erasmus+ project, the pupils had the unique opportunity to open up these places with the explicit inclusion of their respective professional focal points. The aim was for the pupils to open up new vocational fields of action for themselves in the context of the culture of remembrance and to deal intensively with the question of their own professional activity within the framework of study and vocational orientation. In order to open up the places of remembrance, visits and sightseeing of these places were necessary. This was the reason for the mobility within the framework of this project. This was the only way the pupils could authentically experience how these places have been opened up so far and they could experience and analyse the necessary professionalism in the context of memory culture in its entirety and open up fields of action in this environment. Among other things, photo and video documentation, descriptions of the occupational profiles and their necessary competences in the context of the culture of memory, exhibitions, and the production of a radio programme have been carried out on products. The project has a lasting multidimensional effect. All those involved in the Erasmus+ project gained a differentiated knowledge of, in part, common lines of development from the 20th century to the present. The good Polish-German relationship was sustainably strengthened pro-European, as this project is a contribution to sustainable international understanding and rapprochement. In the long term, this Erasmus+ project aims to develop the behavioural disposition of each individual, to stand up for fundamental rights, human dignity and respect in Europe and worldwide, even under difficult conditions.