Institute trains teachers in Czech Republic

Workshops highlight testimonies of local historical importance

Martin Šmok, the USC Shoah Foundation Institute’s Senior International Program Consultant, gave presentations at a training event for teachers organized by Pant o.s. The event took place at the Summer School of Modern History in Ostrava, Czech Republic on August 29 and 30.

Šmok and a colleague, Marcel Mahdal, led four training workshops at the event. Mahdal is a representative of Pant o.s. and a graduate of "A New Generation of Learning:  Holocaust Education and the Internet," a workshop the Institute organized at Central European University in Budapest; the program included training on the Institute’s Visual History Archive. Šmok and Mahdal demonstrated how testimony can be utilized to study the local history of the border region between the Czech Republic, Germany, and Poland.

The Institute’s archive contains testimony from more than 500 survivors and other witnesses in the Czech Republic. Local educators can access the entire archive at Charles University in Prague.  Click here to find an access site near you