JERUSALEM (EJP)---The European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights (FRA) and Yad Vashem have initiated an educational project to create an online pedagogical toolkit on the Holocaust and Human Rights Education.

The launch was announced on Wednesday, on the day marking 73 years since the Kristallnacht  pogrom in Germany.

 The toolkit was developed in response to a real educational gap, expressed by both educators and students.

It is a practical online guide for educators who wish to develop teaching projects that link the Holocaust and the protection of human rights.

Projects and activities in the toolkit combine teaching history lessons, developing empathy with the victims, connecting the knowledge of the Holocaust with that of human rights, deriving implications for today’s world, and empowering students to respect human rights.

Sample content ranges from Austrian high school students learning about the anti-Semitic portrayal of Jews in the Nazi propaganda paper Der Stürmer to Slovenian middle school students learning about the Holocaust as a case study in an effort to become active participants in the process of learning about human rights.

The toolkit contains also 11 posters created by design students from Europe and abroad as part of a prestigious international competition sponsored by the International Task Force for Holocaust Education, Remembrance and Research, to commemorate the Holocaust.

These projects aim to inspire teachers across the EU to use the toolkit as a basis for exploring and discussing the connections between the Holocaust and human rights and values.

The European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights (FRA) is the EU’s independent expert body on fundamental rights. Since 2007, it has been advising decision-makers in the EU on legal and practical rights issues, based on its own research data.