ONLINE STRUCTURED DIALOGUE ACTIVITY 4/12/2020

On the 4th of December, the second project activity took place, coordinated by the Slovak project partner Youth for Equality. More than 90 people, including students, teachers, young people, representatives of organisations and the civil society as well as youth workers, academics and policy makers from 9 different countries attended actively the event which last around 3 hours and was carried out via the ZOOM platform.

After the introduction to the activity and the overall project by the hosting organisation, Mrs. Mgr. Eva Baumann, an internal doctoral student of the Comenius University, Department of History, Faculty of Education of Comenius University, expert in the field of didactics of history, presented the history about the Holocaust paradigm and analyzed how European countries like Italy or Slovakia and their citizens reacted to the Holocaust and how citizens had treated their local Jewish community.

The second guest of our activity was Mr. Ing. Jozef Cipin, a Holocaust survivor, who narrated and shared with the participants his story of how he got to the camp, how he perceived it later on, and how it passed over time. The participants had the chance to pose questions to Mr. Ing. Jozef Cipin about his experience while general discussions about freedom also were made.

The Structured Dialogue also included a presentation about the current situation of perception of the Holocaust, hate speech in society and discrimination. Mr. Mgr. Andrej Stančík, as a member of the National Council of the Slovak Republic for the OĽANO movement and chairman of the Civic Democrat Youth raised to the audience questions such as citizens tendency to forget the past, the arise of extremism within some communities and the role of policy- makers towards eliminating hate speech occurrences.

Mrs. Kristína Grečková from the Milan Šimečka Foundation took also the floor and presented the current situation in Slovakia towards inclusion and discrimination.

During the event, the participants joined a series of discussions with our guest and had the opportunity to express their views, get answers to their questions and navigate to examples of active citizenship and tolerance.

The whole event was moderated by a professional moderator and coordinated by the staff of Youth for Equality.