© Alina Simmelbauer
Menschlichkeit bewahren! Kommunen sensibilisieren und stärken [Keeping Humanity! Sensitize and Strengthen Municipalities]
In the first step, the project “Menschlichkeit bewahren! Kommunen sensibilisieren und stärken” (Keeping Humanity! Sensitize and Strengthen Municipalities) trains middle-, upper- and senior-level employees in local governments in various cities in Bavaria on the topics of current manifestations of antisemitism and group-based misanthropy in the form of ableism, i.e. discrimination against people with disabilities.
On the basis of sound knowledge about National Socialist injustice, its fundamental origins and ideologies and about the role of their own professional groups in the National Socialist regime, participants are to be sensitized to discrimination occurring in society today and enabled to identify patterns of misanthropic thought and narratives of antisemitism and ableism which are already expressed at a low level and to counteract them successfully.
The project focuses on ableism and antisemitism, especially the transfer of knowledge and skills in the daily work of trained local government employees. Special attention is given to the structures and human-social conditions that made the atrocities of the National Socialist apparatus possible, in order to gain understanding concerning the current manifestations of misanthropy. The project is characterized by the possibility of personal encounters with victims of antisemitism and ableism, with historical eyewitnesses or their descendants, as well as the offer of specialist excursions.
Interactive, hybrid face-to-face and online lectures and seminars are offered. In addition, there is a multipart certified, nationwide online continuing education program as well as encounters and specialist excursions, for example to a center of modern Jewish life or to a thematic exhibition. Furthermore, a project-related specialist event is organized for interested parties and multipliers.
The European Janusz Korczak Academy is a Jewish educational institution which is open to the wider society. The focus of its educational work is the prevention and counter of antisemitism and other forms of discrimination by means of personal encounters, events, training and continuing education as well as education about Janusz Korczak and his humanistic pedagogy.
Project partners:
Landeshauptstadt München
Liberale Jüdische Gemeinde Beth Shalom München
Israelitische Kultusgemeinde Nürnberg
Duration: 01.11.2021 until 30.04.2023