A Postcard from Stiftung Louisenlund: Anti-Semitism in Modern Germany

Posted: 23 June 2021

Overview

Stiftung Louisenlund hosted Round Square postcard for students aged 16-18 on Zoom on Antisemitism in Modern Germany. Over 100 students from 29 schools in 14 countries (Germany, Switzerland, India, South Africa, Kenya, Colombia, the USA, Canada, Oman, Romania, the UK, Peru, Armenia, and Tanzania) joined the call, in which, the student hosts gave a brief history of the Holocaust before delving into modern day examples of antisemitism and opening up the conversation in Barraza breakouts with their peers from around the world.

Planning

As a school we planned for the event, by first having a meeting where we all agreed that we would like to have our own event. Then we had a brainstorm for what our topic would be and settled on the idea of talking about antisemitism. Anti-Semitism has been documented throughout history, appearing across the globe in various forms for centuries. But recently, there has been a noted rise in anti-Semitism and we, as a group decided it was crucial to address this and raise awareness.

We created a document for our planning committee to generate questions to be asked in the zoom call. One of the students on the planning committee was tasked with creating the artwork for the Postcard invitation. Certain roles were assigned at this time but others were picked up by other students later in the process. We had nine students in the planning committee and were elected from our RS guild this year.

We had a meeting on Zoom, around a week before the actual event where the final roles were allocated and a final check on questions for the zoom call. Many of our students involved in planning had already attended Postcard’s hosted by other Round Square schools, and were familiar with how the actual event would run on the day.

We held one final meeting, where any last minute concerns and questions were resolved, ensuing that everyone was clear with their role and what they would do on the day.

Details

We opened our Postcard with all delegates together as a group on the Zoom call and a Louisenlund student gave a brief welcome and introduction. Then two other students gave a slide show presentation to briefly go over the events of the holocaust and to bring to light the modern antisemitic events. We then broke into breakout rooms where a student leader and a group of 7-11 students discussed what they had learned from the presentation. Student delegates also shared their own experiences with antisemitism, where it was something the experiences themselves or something they read or saw on the news. We then re-convened in the main room and shared our thoughts. After this we entered another breakout and continued the discussion by exploring possible solutions to the issue of antisemitism. Many students thought of ways they could change their own schools and communities to be more inclusive places.

In total our meeting was about 60-75 minutes long and it was a lot of fun.

Impact

We believe this postcard will have a profound impact on every single student who joined the call, who will now be able to educate everyone around them on what they learned. For us, as the group who planned and hosted the event, learning that some students from around the world are not educated on the Holocaust was a real eye opener.

One of the particularly difficult things about fighting anti-Semitism is that, like so many other forms of prejudice, it can show up in unexpected ways and it can be hard to spot. However, left unchecked and unacknowledged, it will only continue to grow. Yet whether our students are directly impacted by this specific form of prejudice or not, we all have a responsibility to name and fight it at every turn. This Postcard helped to open the conversation and raise awareness of the topic.

Our outcomes from our Postcard were, that everybody understood how important this topic is and agreed that we have to do something about antisemitism and that discrimination or hate crimes of any kind has no place in our society.

I think our outcomes as a Round Square committee are that we all learned how to work better together and that we can trust each other in terms of the work we do together and also as people.

I personally think that doing this presentation, we as a group learned even more how to work together and that group work is actually easy if everybody does his/her part. I also think that all of us relearned what happened during the times of the Holocaust and that it is still a topic in Germany. We all shared the feeling of excitement right before the start of the meeting which also helped to know that nobody was alone with his/her feelings.

Long term

The long term outcome of this activity is that every person who joined the call, will take away what they learned, and maybe push for a change in the school curriculum, if the Holocaust, Anti-Semitism, discrimination or xenophobia isn’t such a focus, which for many of the students’ schools it wasn’t. Everyone was able to gain a deeper understanding of current events and the continuing need to fight discrimination at every turn.

Advice

• Always thank the people who joined for their input and try to make some jokes to break the ice a bit.
• You have to expect that many people will not talk which can be rather frustrating.
• Be open minded towards people’s opinions – they come from all over the world, your opinions will maybe clash with theirs.
• Start organising early
• Lastly, just have fun. After doing this everybody wants to do this again!

Author: Student leaders: Make, Geeske, Max and Honey and RS Rep Catherine Donovan