Spring School: Education and Remembrance
International Youth Workcamp Bergen Belsen
The Bergen-Belsen International Work Camp has been held since 1993. Each spring, adolescents and young adults from up to 10 different countries come together here to explore the history of the former Bergen-Belsen POW and concentration camp and National Socialism. The programme also examines related contemporary issues such as the mechanisms of exclusion and the effects of discrimination and persecution. The goal is to foster active remembrance and a diverse culture of commemoration, and also to promote independent critical thought, to meet new people and understand their perspectives, and to have a lot of fun doing it.
The participants work with numerous historical sources, and various creative methods support the processes of individual exploration and group discussion. The programme also involves excursions, eyewitness talks, group work and an examination of historical and political contexts. The participants are encouraged to talk with one another about the contemporary relevance of this history, the exclusion that continues today, and the effects of persecution on ideological and racist grounds.
The International Work Camp had to be held in either digital or hybrid form between 2020 and 2022. The programme has continued in 2023 under a new name: the Bergen-Belsen Spring School. This year, twenty participants from five countries were able to meet in person again for the 29th event of its type. The project aimed to help them better understand the history of the Bergen-Belsen site and to give them a youth-appropriate framework in which they could work together to actively grapple with the past, and which would promote democratic awareness and their own personal development.
If you are interested in the programme or have any questions about the forthcoming Spring Schools, please contact bildung.bergen-belsen@stiftung-ng.de.
The project is carried out jointly by the associations of the Landesjugendring Niedersachsen e.V., the Anne Frank House youth educational centre of the CVJM-Landesverband Hannover e.V., and the Bergen-Belsen Memorial.