A cartoon about a teenager Jack Kagan, Holocaust resistance hero, is an international creative laboratory organized by the German non-profit organization KuBiPro eV this year. , Belarus and Russia.

The idea of ​​the cartoon was proposed by partners from Belarus

The screenplay is based on a story about a prisoner of the Novogrudok ghetto that existed on the territory of Belarus and a participant in the Belsk partisan camp, Jack Kagan. Along with other labor camp prisoners, he managed to escape through the tunnel. Jack joined the Bielski brothers’ partisan group, which led the resistance against the Nazis and saved the lives of large numbers of Jews. This is a unique episode in the history of European Jewish resistance during World War II, say the lab’s organizers.

“This project was proposed to us by our partners in Belarus. There is a Holocaust memorial museum in Novogrudok. Jack Kagan, one of those who came to the museum, used to speak there and until recently they had a very close relationship with him. Unfortunately, he died a few years ago”, says Anna Leonenko, head of the project for the study of European history and the involvement of young people in the creative process “Jewish Resistance in World War II”, in an interview with DW.

The work involves teenagers who already have experience in creating cartoons and other artistic projects. The objective of the creative laboratory is to contribute to the cooperation of civil society, explains the project leader: “The creative laboratory creates amateur products, but sometimes they become super professional. It depends on the kind of people involved in what will win prizes at festivals. Of course, we don’t exclude that, but our main objective is to bring people from different countries together to work on a project.”

“Participants have a common view of the Holocaust”

Participants were assigned to different workshops, there are three in total within the lab: script, design and post-production workshop. The program also includes a series of webinars that delve deeply into the Holocaust, which is perceived differently in each of the three countries. If the focus of the history course in German schools is the crimes of the Nazis, then the theme of the Holocaust is practically absent in Russian textbooks. In Belarus, the central place is occupied by the Minsk ghetto, through which about 100 thousand people passed.

However, participants in the creative lab have a common view of the Holocaust, organizers say. This, according to them, is also evidenced by the experience of the project that KuBiPro carried out two years ago. Then teenagers from five countries participated.

Laboratory participants are schoolchildren and students interested in the topic of the Holocaust.

“At first, we also thought that the situation was perceived differently. Belarus and Ukraine suffered a lot from the Holocaust, as did Poland, because the territories were occupied. In Russia, there were fewer occupied territories, and in principle, historically it happened that “The Jewish population lived in the Pale of Settlement. However, this topic is also important to them. Germany—of course there’s a completely different story,” says Anna Leonenko. To participate in the project, they look for students and students who are genuinely interested in the topic of the Holocaust, she explains.

“We didn’t have, for example, participants who weren’t from Jewish families, whose grandfather, for example, fought on the side of the Nazis. There just weren’t such people. Of course, their view of this situation would probably also be an interesting laboratory, and maybe some discussions had arisen”, says the project leader. The theme of joint work, according to her, was discussed as part of the script workshop, as the participants developed the script, and after that “it focused more on the production, that is, the focus of the interaction is no longer on the theme , but in the form.”

The premiere will be on the 8th of December.

The laboratory will operate until the end of September. KuBiPro partners are NPO “Dialog” and animation film studio “Enfis” from Minsk, as well as the autonomous non-profit organization “Resource Center for Social Initiatives” from Moscow. The project was organized with the support of the German Ministry of Foreign Affairs under the Eastern Partnership and Russia programme.

The premiere of the cartoon about the exploit of Jack Kagan is scheduled for December 8, 2022 – on the Remembrance Day of the first mass execution of Jews in Novogrudok. Subsequently, it will be offered to museums and other organizations that preserve the memory of the Holocaust and the Second World War.