2024: Around 3,000 young people from Salzburg visited concentration camp memorials
Since the school year 2023/24 school classes in Salzburg have been able to visit the concentration camp memorials Mauthausen and Gusen and the subcamps Ebensee and Melk free of charge. In 2024 around 3,000 young people from all districts took part. Salzburg is the frontrunner in Austria as a recent evaluation by Austria’s education agency OeAD shows.
The free excursions to concentration camp memorials are open to all 8th graders and to academic secondary schools. The Austrian Federal Government contributes 250 or 500 euros per school class, depending on the distance, the rest is financed by the province of Salzburg. The excursion is administered by the Austrian education agency OeAD. In 2024 140 classes from schools from all districts of Salzburg took part in the project. Around 3,000 young people were thus reached through an active culture of remembrance. Overview of the schools by districts:
- Flachgau: 17
- Pinzgau and city of Salzburg: twelve
- Pongau: seven
- Tennengau: six
- Lungau: two
Gutschi: ‘Additional funding from the province is effective.’
Thanks to additional funding from the province significantly more young people in Salzburg were able to take part in an excursion to a concentration camp memorial site than in other federal provinces. ‘Around 53 percent of the pupils in grade 8 were able to visit the sites of Nazi atrocities in 2024; for compulsory secondary schools the figure was even higher than 60 percent. Nationwide only about a third of the children in grade 8 visited the sites. The additional funding provided by the province is a good investment here,‘ says Daniela Gutschi, responsible for education at the government of the province of Salzburg.
Actively fighting against forgetting
According to the Jewish Community in Austria the number of antisemitic incidents in Austria has increased fivefold between Vorarlberg and Burgenland following Hamas’ attack on Israel on 7 October 2023. ‘An active culture of remembrance is therefore indispensable to proactively sensitise pupils to radicalisation and antisemitism. We work with young people in the classroom and on-site,’ said the provincial government officer Daniela Gutschi, underlining the importance of the project.
Easy application
The OeAD’s managing director Jakob Calice emphasises: ‘For schools in Salzburg the central application process at the OeAD offers a “one-stop shop” with a range of advantages. The organisational workload is reduced and the schools benefit from clear structures and clearly defined processes, which saves time and resources. Moreover, our ERINNERN:AT programme offers additional advice and support services to help schools prepare the visits well and make them educationally meaningful.’
Deeply moved young people
In April 2024 all fourth-graders at the compulsory secondary school Nonntal visited the Mauthausen concentration camp memorial. ‘The pupils were very moved when they visited the former concentration camp. Particularly when they stood in front of the crematorium or did their own research in the Room of Names. You could tell that the visit had an effect on the young people. Especially when we did the follow-up in class they always asked a lot of questions and on the bus ride back it was always very quiet,’ says Elisabeth Laimer, who will visit the place of horror in Upper Austria again with a school class at the beginning of February.
Read more
- School excursions against radicalisation and antisemitism (5 January 2024)
- Austria's Agency for Education and Internationalisation – OeAD for short
- OeAD Regional Office Salzburg
- OeAD – ERINNERN:AT
Editors: Landes-Medienzentrum
