Faculty members of the Department of Sociology at the Faculty of Croatian Studies, Prof. Renato Matić, PhD, and Asst. Prof. Ivan Perkov, PhD, participated in an international educational seminar for teachers and educators on the Holocaust, held in Berlin from 27 April to 1 May 2026. The seminar was organized by the Memorial and Educational Site House of the Wannsee Conference, one of Europe’s most important institutions dedicated to research and education on the Holocaust, with the Ministry of Science and Education of the Republic of Croatia serving as project co-organizer.

The seminar programme focused on contemporary methods of teaching about the Holocaust, the culture of remembrance, critical understanding of Nazism, and educational approaches to combating antisemitism and hate speech. During the multi-day programme, participants attended expert lectures, workshops, and field visits to memorial sites in Berlin. Particular emphasis was placed on questions of social responsibility, confronting the past, and the challenges of teaching about the Holocaust in the contemporary social and digital context.

One of the central parts of the programme was a visit to the villa on Lake Wannsee, the site of the infamous Wannsee Conference held in January 1942, at which senior Nazi officials coordinated the implementation of the “Final Solution to the Jewish Question.” Through expert guidance and workshops, participants analysed contemporary approaches to Holocaust education from the perspectives of perpetrators, bureaucracy, and the mechanisms of mass violence.

As part of the seminar, participants also visited the “Track 17” memorial (Gleis 17) at Berlin-Grunewald railway station, from which Berlin Jews were deported to ghettos and concentration camps during the Nazi regime. Today, the memorial represents one of the most poignant sites of the culture of remembrance in Germany, and the educational programme opened up questions of responsibility, public memory, and the relationship of contemporary society to the past.

Participants also visited the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe and the Topography of Terror Documentation Centre, located on the site of the former headquarters of the Gestapo and the SS. The workshops addressed various forms of antisemitism, their presence in the public sphere and on social media, as well as possibilities for developing critical and responsible education about historical trauma and contemporary social issues.

The participation of the Department of Sociology faculty members in this international seminar was made possible through scholarships awarded to Prof. Renato Matić, PhD, and Asst. Prof. Ivan Perkov, PhD, by the Ministry of Science, Education and Youth, in cooperation with the House of the Wannsee Conference, for international education dedicated to teaching about the Holocaust and preventing antisemitism. This represents an important professional recognition, confirming their visibility in the field of education on the culture of remembrance and contemporary social challenges. The scholarship builds on an earlier international recognition received by the same faculty members through the support of Northwestern University for the development of a university course on the Holocaust, further confirming the continuity of their teaching and research work and their contribution to the development of sociology studies at the Faculty of Croatian Studies.