On 23 of May 2015 the State President of Latvia, Andris Bērziņš, awarded the winners and their tutors of the Latvian History Competition “History around us” in the grand House of the Riga Latvian Society. More than 200 students as well as their relatives and teachers from all over Latvia came to Riga to take part in this magnificent event. The topic of this year’s competition round was “Artifacts as a Source of History”.
On 19 May 2015 a group of young history researchers from all over Slovenia gathered in the Museum of Contemporary History in Ljubljana for a very festive reason: The Award Ceremony for the prize winners of the Slovenian EUSTORY Competition 2015.
During this year’s Estonian award ceremony one of the participants stated: “My research for this competition made me understand how lucky current generations are to be living in a free country.” The topic of this year’s round was “Estonia during World War II" and the ceremony was held on 8 May 2015 in the Hall of Ministry of Education and Research in Tartu.
From 19-21 April 2015, organisers of national history competitions from twenty-two European countries gathered for the EUSTORY Annual Network Meeting in Helsingør, Denmark. This year’s network meeting was held in partnership with EUROCLIO, the European Association of History Teachers.
On 29 April 2015 the Russian History Competition "Man in History - Russia in the 20th Century” celebrated its 16th award ceremony in the “Theatre of Young Spectators” in Moscow. The jury selected 53 finalists out of a number of 2,024 authors. Prior to the award ceremony the finalists gathered for a five day intensive workshop about “Memorials to Victims of political Repressions in Russia”. The Russian competition has been conducted by the eldest Russian non-governmental organisation MEMORIAL International since 1999.
"Talking to young people I see that they learnt by rote at school that fascism and national socialism were bad but quite often they are not able to explain why it is so," regrets Ksenia Srednyak, a 29-year-old historian from Russia.
On 15 April 2015 the award ceremony for the winners of the Czech EUSTORY Competition took place in the Town Hall in Prague. Forty-three participants submitted their works to this year’s topic “The Story of a Photograph - Memory and History in Front and Behind the Lens”. The award ceremony started with the opera singer Edita Adlerová who performed different creations written by George Gershwin. The awards were presented by the famous Czech actor Zdeněk Svěrák. The students also had the opportunity to talk to Ondrej Kolínský, Czech EUSTORY Alumni from 2009.
“The stories and perspectives of the children of the war hardly feature in our collective memory. I want to understand how their experiences shaped the next generation and affected my own generation accordingly," explains Bettina from Germany.
A total of 1,563 entries were handed in by participants who researched this year’s topic "Being different. Outsiders in History". "The excellent turnout shows that we struck a chord with young participants", says Sven Tetzlaff, responsible for the German History Competition.
