Leonid Levy History Workshop (2003)
"A particularly important Belarusian-German project is the "History Workshop in Minsk", which was created on the site of the former Minsk ghetto. There, Belarusians and Germans work together to create a good future by remembering the past."1
Former Federal President Johannes Rau in April 2006
The History Workshop in Minsk is located in a former building of the Minsk ghetto
The German-Belarusian History Workshop was founded in 2003 by the International Centre for Education and Exchange (IBB) "Johannes Rau" in Minsk, the IBB Dortmund and the Association of Jewish Communities in Belarus.2 Since 2015, the History Workshop has borne the name of its co-founder Leonid Levin, who died in 2014.3 In this way, the History Workshop aims to represent a place of authentic remembrance. The learning and memorial site, which is aimed equally at historians and interested people, is still a unique project in the post-Soviet space.
The History Workshop celebrates commemoration days together with partners and eyewitnesses
At the opening of the exhibition "War and Love" (2016)
Students from Germany in conversation with a eyewitness
Educational trip of Düsseldorf students to Minsk
Since the History Workshop is a non-governmental organization (NGO), a differentiated and non-state-bound discussion of the crimes of National Socialism can take place here. The focus of the work is on the history of the Minsk ghetto and the site of extermination in Maly Trascjanec, which Germans and Belarusians have neglected for decades.4 This history should be included in the European culture of remembrance. By focusing on the fate of the victims, the History Workshop deviates from the glorifying Soviet culture of remembrance, which for a long time made the Holocaust taboo and placed heroes in the foreground.
In addition to researching these places, the main goal of the project is to preserve public memory and enable new generations to learn from the past. For this purpose, the History Workshop organises seminars and conferences and contributes significantly to the preservation of the memory of the extermination site in Maly Trascjanec and to the education of people of different ages through exhibitions, guided tours and international educational trips.
One of the History Workshop's most important projects is the electronic Eyewitness Archive. With the financial support of the German Foreign Office, life stories of predominantly Jewish victims from the territories of the former German Reich (Germany, Austria, Czech Republic) and the Soviet Union who were deported to the ghetto in Minsk or to Maly Trascjanec have been documented here in German and Russian since 2013 and are accessible to everyone.5
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1 Former Federal President Johannes Rau in April 2006.
2 Сf. website of History workshop Minsk (accessed on: 08/17/2021).
3 A Jewish architect (1936-2014) who not only played a key role in the design of the History Workshop projects, but also worked on many memorial sites for the victims of the Holocaust erected in the former Soviet Union. He was also chairman of the Association of Belarusian Jewish Organizations and Communities in Belarus. Cf. http://gwminsk.com/de/news/memoriam-leonid-lewin (accessed on: 08/25/2021).
4 Cf. Dalhouski, Zur Transformation des sowjetischen Gedenkortes, p. 124; Dalhouski, Zur Geschichte der Wahrnehmung, p. 147f.; Markschteder/Dalhouski, Das Bildungskonzept des IBB, p. 558.
5 Сf. Broschüre der Geschichtswerkstatt Minsk (accessed on: August 17, 2021), pp. 8, 10, 20f.; Markschteder/Dalhouski, Das Bildungskonzept des IBB, p. 562, 564f.