At the beginning of October the EUROCLIO office in The Hague hosted the preparatory meeting for the new project ‘Silencing citizens through censorship: Learning from Europe’s totalitarian and dictatorial past’. Eight team members from the project were present at the meeting, representing different member associations. Also five EUROCLIO staff members were present at the meeting.
The project involves a transnational group of history and citizenship educators from EUROCLIO’s member associations in France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Macedonia, Poland, and Spain in the development and implementation of students-driven projects on censorship in Europe’s 20th century dictatorial and totalitarian regimes. The focus will be on the history of Franco’s Spain (1939-1975), Vichy France (1940-1944), Nazi Germany (1933-1945), Mussolini’s Italy (1922-1943), the post-1945 Hungarian and Polish Republics and the Republic of Macedonia as part of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia under Tito.
The meeting had a few aims, including the team members of the project to get to know each other and to get a clearer vision of what the project process and results will be. During the three-day meeting the members were more thoroughly introduced to EUROCLIO’s activities, were introduced to Historiana and to the different member associations which were present during the meeting, and brainstormed together about the content of the project. The team members also defined development details together for the following project activities. Some formalities about the project were finalized, different responsibilities were defined and the members developed a time plan for future steps. Also a Facebook group was created. The next meeting on the agenda will be the First Development Meeting in Bologna, Italy, 22-24 January.