As part of the Week of Remembrance of the Victims of the Holocaust, with the support of the Government of Moscow and the Russian Jewish Congress (RJC), the XXI International Schoolchildren’s Conference "Holocaust: Remembrance and Prevention" was opened at the RJC Memorial Synagogue on Poklonnaya Gora. Dr. Ilya Altman, Director of the International Center for the History of the Holocaust and Genocides of RSUH, and Dr. Svetlana Tikhankina, an analyst at the Center, spoke at the Conference. The event continued at RSUH, in the building on Nikolskaya Street. The schoolchildren and Rector Bezborodov summed up the results of the Conference.
Students of grades 9-11 came to Moscow from 13 regions of the Russian Federation, (the Republic of Buryatia, the Stavropol and Khabarovsk Territories, the Jewish Autonomous Region; Irkutsk, Kaliningrad, Kirov, Leningrad, Novgorod, Pskov, Samara, Saratov and Chelyabinsk regions, Kazakhstan).
“The participants of the Conference asked questions, assessed the presentations,” says Dr. Altman. - Many relied on documents from local archives. Sometimes, though not often, theose were personal family stories.
On the first day of the Conference, schoolchildren saw the exposition of the Holocaust Museum and the contents of the exhibition "The Holocaust: Destruction, Resistance, Salvation". The tour was conducted by Dr. Altman and Dr. Tikhankina. The children had independently prepared mini-tours and conducted them for their supervisors. The first day of the Conference ended with a screening and discussion of the film Auschwitz (1945). Dr. Altman spoke about the authors of the film and the history of its creation.
The following days of the Conference were held at the Institute of History and Archives of RSUH. Dr. Kuznetsov, director of the UN Information Center in Moscow, presented the book "The Righteous Among the Nations of the World who accomplished a feat on the territory of the USSR". Also during the Conference, the 18th collection of works by schoolchildren and students participants of the international competition, was presented.
The winners of the competition received their awards during the Memorial Evening-Requiem "Keeper of Memory". The winners of the competition were the teacher Larisa Prokudina from the city of Engels, the student Maria Kolacheva from the city of Nevel, and the student of the HSE Anastasia Krovitskaya from Kazakhstan. The winners in the nomination "Creative work" were Svetlana Fedosova from the Kostroma region and teacher Tatyana Shumel from the Republic of Belarus.
Dr. Altman, Director of the International Center for the History of the Holocaust and Genocides of RSUH, received the Guardian of Memory award. This award is given to people who have made a special contribution to the preservation of the memory of the victims of the genocide. Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin, poet Yevgeny Yevtushenko (posthumously), Governor of the Volgograd Region Andrey Bocharov, artistic director of the Vakhtangov State Academic Theater Rimas Tuminas have also been recipients of this award.
