by Dino Perco /
Reflections on my participation in CU REMEMBER – Vienna, May 2025
On May 14, 2025, I had the honor of participating as a speaker in the panel “Discussing Remembrance! The Possibilities and Limits of Remembrance Education,” organized in Vienna as part of the European project CU REMEMBER – Children’s Universities, Open Schooling and the formation of local MemoriaLinks for European Remembrance.
The meeting was held at the 4lthangrund cultural center, on the campus of the University of Vienna, and was an important opportunity for discussion in an international environment, where students, educators, researchers, teachers, museum professionals, and representatives of associations working in Holocaust education came together.
Deina, an Italian association that has been involved in memory education and active citizenship for many years, with which I collaborate on a regular basis, was also invited to participate in the project as a stakeholder. My name is Dino Perco and I work in the field of public history, with a particular focus on civic, participatory, and conscious education. I work as an educator, educational program developer, and guide at memorial sites, particularly at the Risiera di San Sabba in Trieste — the only concentration camp in Italy that had a crematorium. With Deina, we develop training courses in collaboration with schools, universities, local authorities, and cultural institutions. Most of the projects consist of educational and remembrance trips throughout Europe, addressing the history of the Shoah and the last century with a particular focus on education about complexity.
The round table was moderated by Nadine Dimmel, historian and president of the Verein GEDENKDIENST association, which is active in historical and political education and the promotion of European civil volunteering. I was joined on the panel by Sharon Stamberger Esztl, a teacher at the Zwi Perez Chajes Jewish School in Vienna. Her presentation showed how even very young children can deal with profound issues by working on empathy, inclusion, and awareness. The discussion led us to reflect not only on what works in our way of telling the story of the Shoah, but also on what is missing: what makes it difficult to work on memory today, what are the risks of ritualization, and how to deal with fatigue, resistance, or indifference in school contexts and beyond. We both emphasized the importance of accessible and engaging teaching tools: I myself illustrated the use of historical-themed game books, which in our workshops confront young people with complex moral choices, stimulating critical reflection and responsibility. During the panel, I talked about the Promemoria_Auschwitz project, which since 2014 has involved almost 30,000 young people from nine Italian regions and eight Italian universities. The project is divided into three phases: training, a trip to places of remembrance (Auschwitz-Birkenau), and collective restitution. I talked about how we set up the pre-trip training workshops, such as the one on ‘Ordinary Men’, inspired by Christopher Browning’s essay. Students are encouraged to reflect on the dynamics of obedience and conformity by role-playing ordinary men involved in Nazi crimes and questioning the value of their choices. The discussion was stimulating and challenging, and reinforced a conviction shared by all participants: without continuous and structured training for teachers, even the most innovative educational programs risk being lost over time.
Those of us who work with students for only short periods of time can at best open doors, raise questions, and leave traces. But for these traces to become shared paths, the involvement of institutions—from municipalities to regions—and above all of schools is essential. Teachers are the real protagonists of educational continuity: central figures, capable of building networks, accompanying processes, and transforming an experience into a real path of growth.
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