Shining a light on the ‘lost’ Shoah history of Belarus

Over the past seven years The Together Plan has supported Jewish communities in the former Soviet republic to regenerate Jewish life and is also developing the Belarus route for the European Routes of Jewish Heritage .

But its venture with JCD will be aimed mostly at non-Jewish children in a Belarus school.

Some 20-plus year-7 children from the UK will be selected also to participate, digitally meeting up with their Belarusian peers for a number of sessions over the seven months of the programme, which is due to launch on Holocaust Memorial Daya.

The aim is to create a travelling exhibition and each child taking part will be asked to write a short piece reflecting on the significance of what they learned.

Every child will receive a copy of an original archive document, compiled by the Nazis, putting names and faces to just a handful of the 5,000 Jewish children who perished in the Brest ghetto.

Ms Brunner recalled a trip to Belarus with a group of young adults to do research for the Jewish heritage trail. “We had a non-Jewish cameraman with us, a young man who filmed survivors and various places of memory. He was shocked. ‘Why don’t I know this history?’, he said.”