Miroslava Ludvíková with Prime Minister Mirek Topolánek in Toronto, Canada


NEIGHBOURS WHO DISAPPEARED
A TRIBUTE TO CHILD HOLOCAUST VICTIMS

The second phase of the Neighbours Who Disappeared project, titled The Tribute to Child Holocaust Victims, was officially announced in 2005 under the auspices of the Senate of the Parliament of the Czech Republic, as a direct continuation of the previous phase. The final outcome is a result of two years of cooperation between the Education and Cultural Centre of the Jewish Museum in Prague and Czech schools, in reaction to months of research done by the schools' students. This research was focused on the fates of children and youngsters, young people of the same age as the researchers themselves, therefore a topic close to them. Some research teams even traced the fates of former students of their own schools! The first results came out in the form of students' written works on disappeared Jewish children and youngsters. These works were then used as sources of information for various outputs, such as memorial panels in schools. A copy of such a panel is also used in an itinerant exhibition the target of which is nationwide and even international presentation of the project. Many schools provide further information in the form of websites, audio and video recordings, brochures and publications, dedicated to the memory of particular Jewish personae or the histories of local Jewish communities.
The project meets and even exceeds the requirements of the Framework Education Program. The participants learn skills which the can later apply in their university studies as well as in practical lives. The project changes the attitude and approach towards the subject, not only of the participants but also of the public at large. Knowledge gained from personal research, as well as by learning of the fates of people from the first hand, is not easily forgotten. It sinks much deeper than information from books or films. It underlines and deepens knowledge from schoolbooks, no matter how (un)prepared the participants are at the start.
Moreover, the work has real meaning - it preserves stories, documents and photographs which would otherwise be forever forgotten, for the future generations.