On February 17-20, 2016, a seminar of the “Tolerance - Lessons of the Holocaust” program was held in Kyrgyzstan. The seminar’s target audience was teachers of history and social studies of non-Jewish schools, as well as experts in teaching methodology and other workers both from the school system and from informal initiatives in education.

The seminar was organized by the Kyiv office of the Euro-Asian Jewish Congress (EAJC) with the support of the Claims Conference (Germany). Partners of the seminar included the Ukrainian Center for Holocaust Studies (Director - EAJC General Council member Dr. Anatoliy Podolsky), the “Menorah” Society for Jewish Culture of Kyrgyzstan (Director - EAJC General Council member Vladimir Kritzman) and the Ministry of Education and Science of Kyrgyzstan. 34 teachers and methodology experts participated in the seminar, coming from Bishkek, and the Issyk-Kul, Chuy, and Jalal-Abad regions.

The program of the seminar followed the general “Tolerance - Lessons of the Holocaust” program plan and consisted of a theoretical and a practical part. Anatoliy Podolsky read lectures on Jewish life in Europe beofre and after the Holocaust, as well as on types and peculiarities both pertinent to the Holocaust as a single event and to other genocides of the XX century, and, finally, on the specifics of Nazi ideology and the role of propaganda during the Third Reich. Lectures about Kyrgyzstan drew considerable interest from the audience. Vladimir Kritzman spoke about the history of the Jewish community in Kyrgyzstan, and Marina Glushkova, a staff member of the Center for Social Integration, spoke about national policy on integrating minorities into Kyrgyzstan society and about inter-ethnic relations in general.

Workshops consisted of teaching the participants how to work with historic Holocaust documents, a framework for watching a documentary with survivors of the Holocaust in class and a follow-up discussion, methodological approaches and psychological aspects in teaching the history of the Holocaust. The seminar teachers emphasized the necessity to help the children emerge from the heavy emotional state that they will have been in after such a class. Teachers for the seminar included Nadezhda Kolpachenko, a teacher of history of the highest qualification category and head of the Resource Center for Civil Education and Personal Development (Tsuryupinsk city, Kherson region, Ukraine) and Nadezhda Ufimtseva, Director of the EAJC “Tolerance - Lessons of the Holocaust” program.

The participants began actively discussing the material during the seminar itself and sharing ideas about holding classes and other events dedicated to the history of the Holocaust.

The organizators of the seminar plan to continue long-distance work with the seminar participants by sending updated teaching materials and curriculums and inviting them to participate in upcoming seminars and events in the program.

The seminar in Kyrgyzstan was financed by the Kyiv office of the Euro-Asian Jewish Congress despite the fact that EAJC President Julius Meinl has stopped financing EAJC programs and offices on August 1, 2015.