An article about the activities of our history club – ‘’History-the eternal teacher of the nations’’

 

During this school year the club's activity is dedicated to studying the history of the Holocaust, a topic that is very interesting to us because it is related to important events in which our fellow citizens take part and Kyustendil becomes known outside our country. We applied and won funding from Olga Langiel Institute-Washington, with a working title of our project "It's never too late for the good, "our club is also working on the MES’ program Supporting Success."

We study not only about the victims of the Holocaust during World War ll, but also the contribution of the five people from Kyustendil  who make our city known far beyond the Bulgarian borders. On February 6 2020 we found a roundtable in the assembly hall of our high school to memorialize January 27 – the International Holocaust Remembrance Day, the Jewish people killed in the Nazi death camps. For several months  now, we the 15 students from the club have been collecting documents by visiting the museum of Dimitar Peshev in our town, the State Archives, we read the published articles to find out who these five men were who contributed to the rescue of  48 thousand Bulgarian Jewish people  from the Nazi death camps in 1943.

 Divided into teams, we summarized the information collected, prepared scientific letters with the help of our leader Mrs. E. Mircheva for Peter Mihalev, Ivan Momchilov, Assen Suichmezov, Vladimir Kurtev and Dimitar Peshev, who we presented at our round table on February 6th. Our guests were Head of Department at the State Archives - Kyustendil - Mr. P. Sheykov , Angel Djonev, director of history science from RIM-Kyustendil, Jewish President of the “Shalom” organization in the city - Mr. Isakov and the oldest member of this community - Mr. S. Isakov, Mrs. Ivanka Yankova - Headmisstress of "Dr. Petar Beron"Language school, our teachers, classmates, and representatives of the media. Our idea was an exciting event for our school. Our messages showed our classmates and guests exciting details from the biographies of the “five rescuers” who in those dramatic days by risking their future and their families’ ones to accomplish their human and citizen debt and that’s why they are announced as Righteous of the world. As well as the messages, we prepared a photo exhibition with photos, which show important moments from the history of the Holocaust and the life of the Kyustendil “rescuers”. The activity of our club will continue during the next few months and on March 9th another event will be held. On the day of “The saving of the Bulgarian Jewish people”, which took place in 1943 we and our partners from “Sv. P. Hilendarski”school in Dupnitsa will visit the D. Peshev museum and in the role of tour guides we will introduce the people to the results from the researching and exploring activity of our club and they will present us their collected information about the history of the Jewish community in Dupnitsa.

  We request you notice and look through our activity as we consider the topic we are working on is very important. Questions about tolerance and humanity are eternal and condemning aggression and injustice is an important part of educating the next generations.

   We are sending pictures, too.

   We welcome you to our next event at the D. Peshev museum, where with the students from Dupnitsa will memorialize March 9, and the day which the Kyustendil delegation left for Sofia to find a way to save the Jewish people. On March 9 at 1 p.m. flowers will be served at the D. Peshev monument and we will visit the D. Peshev museum, where we will host an open lesson about the “Kyustendil rescuers”.

   Club ‘’History-the eternal teacher of the nations’’ - ‘’Dr. P. Beron Language High School’’, Kyustendil.