Project examples

Virtual tour: Opening up the Maly Trostenets Memorial Site in Multiple Perspectives

What does the EVZ Foundation intend to achieve with the project?

Students from Minsk, Osnabrück and Vienna developed virtual tours, 3D models and 360-degree photographs of the Maly Trostenets Memorial in Belarus. As a result, they critically examine the site from multiple perspectives in a transnational context. Young people create tours for young people, sharing on knowledge between peers.

Who’s involved, and who does the project reach?

Experts from numerous archives and museums advised and supported the project participants. In this way, young visitors can independently access the history of the memorial and the extermination site – on site or online from anywhere in the world.

Why is the Foundation supporting this project in particular?

Maly Trostenets is the largest extermination site for Jews on the territory of the occupied Soviet Union, and therefore an important memorial site for the Eastern European public. To date, it is virtually unknown to the German public. The project shows the pan-European framework of National Socialist terror and the ramifications of the Holocaust – and thus the need for transnational remembrance. It complements the previous funding for the erection of the memorial site by the Federal Foreign Office.

Project sponsors: Johannes Rau International Center for Education and Exchange, Minsk. Cooperation partners: Osnabrück University, University of Vienna.
Duration of the project: 2021–2022
Funding amount: 84.076 EUR
Funding countries: Germany, Austria, Belarus
Website: https://malytrostinec.nghm-uos.de

#LastSeen. App and Digital Image Atlas of NS Deportations from 1938 to 1945

What does the EVZ Foundation intend to achieve with the project?

The interactive educational offer deciphers selected images and thus provides access to the history of NS deportations. The images make the fate of Jews and Sinti and Roma visible and show that the injustice often took place in public. 

Who’s involved, and who does the project reach?

In addition to educators and school students, local historical stakeholders are also part of the project. The portal also offers researchers the opportunity to develop new research questions and fill existing vacancies. Both victims of National Socialist persecution and their relatives as well as the successor generations contribute their perspectives to the process of coming to terms with the past. 

Why is the Foundation supporting this project in particular?

The project consists of an image atlas and a digital game that the school students helped to develop. The digital image atlas is a new learning format. It creates lasting visual impressions and allows for emotional access to the topic. According to MEMO Youth Study, visual content remains particularly powerful in the minds of young people. A face-to-face workshop for school students expands the range of local firsthand education. 

Project sponsor: Arolsen Archives – International Center on Nazi Persecution/International Tracing Service (ITS). Cooperation partners: House of the Wannsee Conference - a memorial and educational site, Public History in the Cultural Department of the City of Munich, USC Dornsife Center for Advanced Genocide Research, Los Angeles, Center for Research on Antisemitism, Technische Universität Berlin.
Duration of the project: 2021–2023
Funding amount: 704.500 EUR
Funding country: Germany
Website: www.lastseen.org

MIRROR // MIRROR: Art and Theater Project

What does the EVZ Foundation intend to achieve with the project?

The three-part project MIRROR // MIRROR shows aspects of the history of National Socialist injustice in Leipzig. In interdisciplinary and transmedial formats, the project establishes relationships to contemporary forms of right-wing radicalization, thus creating artistic and emotional access to little-known aspects and sites of NS forced labor.

Who’s involved, and who does the project reach?

The theater cooperated with the Nazi Forced Labor Memorial, a game designer, and a community center in the migrant-rich East Leipzig district. The theatrical simulation game "ON THE OTHER SIDE" (Part 1) invited a young audience to a test session on behalf of the fictional social media platform HYDRA. Visitors playfully experienced, e.g. as content creators or influencers, how the mechanisms of social media promote and disseminate increasingly "extreme" content. The mobile game "Vibezig" (Part 2) takes interested Leipzigers to the sites of NS forced labor and asks how to deal with places that were previously considered historically unburdened and their history. Lay actors also participated in the intergenerational district project THE FUTURE IS YOURS (Part 3).

Why is the Foundation supporting this project in particular?

The project combines analog, multimedia and participatory formats and opens up space for current debates on the culture of remembrance. At the closing event, "Alles »Versöhnungstheater«?" (It's all "reconciliation theater"?), theater educators discussed with young people the current theses of the author Max Czolleks. He calls for addressing today's discrimination against marginalized groups as part of a contemporary culture of remembrance. The project shows: We are all responsible for shaping the present so that a tyranny like National Socialism will never happen again.

Project sponsor: Theater der Jungen Welt (TDJW) Leipzig
Duration of the project: 2021–2023
Funding amount: 350.000 EUR
Funding country: Germany
Website: https://www.theaterderjungenweltleipzig.de/en/hauptnavigation/mirror-mirror/das-projekt
More on the topic:​ TRACING REMEMBRANCE: Interview with Sebastian Quack and Florian Heller

"Frankfurt and the National Socialism": An Interactive and Digital Memory Platform

What does the EVZ Foundation intend to achieve with the project?

The platform creates multi-perspective approaches to the critical examination of the topic of National Socialist injustice in Frankfurt am Main and makes the knowledge available for inclusive historical-political educational work. The geo-based app allows those interested to search for traces of National Socialism in urban space. The website provides information about the approximately 12,000 deported and murdered Jews from Frankfurt, whose faces and stories can thus be remembered. Each of the three exhibitions is a critical examination of the history of National Socialism in today's diverse society.

Who’s involved, and who does the project reach?

The project is open to many different groups: Descendants and researchers can contribute information or photos about people or places, and teachers can create custom tours in the app.

Why is the Foundation supporting this project in particular?

Until 1933, Frankfurt had the largest Jewish population in the German Reich and was considered liberal and democratic. The project illustrates how the city was able to adapt so quickly and radically to National Socialism, and how slow the process of coming to terms with it was in the aftermath. The platform is innovative and inclusive: visitors can engage with the history of National Socialism in their own personal way. The strong reference to the present and local history makes the project more tangible. The development of the project was documented in drawings, illustrating the emotional and intellectual process of critical examination.

Project sponsor: Historical Museum Frankfurt
Duration of the project: 2020–2022
Funding amount: 785.700 EUR
Funding country: Germany
Website: https://www.historisches-museum-frankfurt.de/

Humanitarian and Social Support for 60 Survivors of the Genocide against the Roma and Work with Young Volunteers

What does the EVZ Foundation intend to achieve with the project?

The activities improve the health and social situation of the Roma survivors of National Socialist persecution and strengthen their social participation in the project region. Work with young volunteers fosters understanding between the generations. The project sponsor applies for official recognition as a social services, home care, and community counseling organization. This means that in the future, the project sponsor will be able to bill the municipality for care and social services themselves.

Who’s involved, and who does the project reach?

60 survivors of the genocide against the Roma received care and social counseling, as well as food, medicine, and hygiene products in several locations in Romania. In a summer camp with three survivors, 15 young people learned about the history of persecution of the Roma and their living situation today. Afterward, the volunteers regularly visited the elderly people in their homes. Some community members were trained in community development, project management and fundraising, others participated in the International Roma Genocide Remembrance Day in Auschwitz.

Why is the Foundation supporting this project in particular?

The EVZ Foundation's funding strengthens and stabilizes the Roma self-organization in Romania. The intergenerational approach helps to ensure that young volunteers regularly visit and care for survivors of National Socialist persecution. The events on the history of the deportation and murder of the Roma inform and sensitize the public about the history of persecution of the Roma.

Project sponsor: Marginalized Communities Association
Duration of the project: 2021–2022
Funding amount: 68.430 EUR
Funding country: Romania
Website: –

Humanitarian Aid and Support for the LGBTIQ Community in Ukraine

What does the EVZ Foundation intend to achieve with the project?

The project funds four Ukrainian LGBTIQ organizations in Kyiv, Kharkiv and Zaporizhzhia. The Foundation also provides emergency humanitarian aid and psychological support to the local LGBTIQ community.

Who’s involved, and who does the project reach?

The project is run by project managers, social workers and activists. It aims to reach the entire LGBTIQ community in three major cities of Ukraine.

Why is the Foundation supporting this project in particular?

People from the LGBTIQ community are particularly affected by Russia's war of aggression against Ukraine. In addition to food, they also receive psychological support. They find an atmosphere of trust in the community centers set up in the project. In addition, a program is being set up to provide professional support to LGBTIQ people who have lost their jobs as a result of the war. The NGO "KyivPride" is also planning to set up a shelter for internally displaced LGBTIQ people.

Project sponsor: NGO KyivPride. Cooperation partners: Sfera, Spektrum, Gender Z.
Duration of the project: 2022–2023
Funding amount: 64.762 EUR
Funding country: Ukraine

Websites: https://www.instagram.com/kyivpride/

https://www.facebook.com/kyivpride/posts/pfbid02qSYBFL9S8kTVGDtU5qaZ1A2vY1FA8VZ1MPPmr4BVhaHj28jv3oDW34peeNGyArYFl

Supporting Holocaust Survivors in Ukraine via Online Activities and Youth Volunteers

What does the EVZ Foundation intend to achieve with the project?

Under the current conditions of war, which have intensified since the Covid-19 pandemic, the elderly and non-mobile people in Ukraine are especially lonely. The main goal of the project is therefore to activate the Jewish victims of National Socialist persecution both physically and mentally, thus reducing their sense of loneliness.

Who’s involved, and who does the project reach?

All activities take place online or in the homes of the survivors. Therefore, they are also feasible in pandemic and war conditions and are suitable for those with little or no mobility. Young volunteers engage in all project activities. In addition, about 25 members of the Organization of Anti-Fascist Resistance Fighters (OBAS) will participate.

Why is the Foundation supporting this project in particular?

In the project, the survivors of National Socialist persecution learn how to cope better with everyday war life and find new (online) friends. This results in learning modules that can be used by other organizations with the same target group. In this way, the pilot project has a lasting effect.

Project sponsor: Saporoshskij Blagotworitelnyj Fond "Chesed Michael"
Duration of the project: 2022–2024
Funding amount: 30.000 EUR
Funding country: Ukraine
Website: https://www.facebook.com/hesed.zp.ua
Videos from the courses: https://youtu.be/OYXPrB03sv0