Mission Statement

Place of past, memory and present

The Jawne Memorial and Educational Center is a place of remembrance of the Shoah and of dealing with the history of National Socialism, but is also a place of living memory and the present.
With its pedagogical offers, it is directed especially at students from Cologne and the region of North Rhine-Westphalia, but also at all interested people in Germany and abroad.

The history of a Jewish school offers children and young people in particular access to German-Jewish history of the 19th, 20th and 21st centuries. The examination with the pupils’ everyday realities offers points of contact to the young people’s own experiences and creates opportunities for identification. It facilitates the acquisition of specialized knowledge and enables empathy and understanding.

Learning to understand the history of the Jawne encourages sensitivity toward and criticism of anti-Semitism, racism, and exclusion. The Memorial and Educational Center aims at motivating visitors to reflect on cultural and religious difference in the past and presence and to increase their intercultural competence.

Former Jawne students but also their children and grandchildren now come from all over the world to visit the Jawne Memorial and Educational Center.
That these international encounters and the exchange with the second and third generation will create new bridges for the future is of special concern to us.

Interested persons who – on the basis of these guidelines – would like to participate in the honorary working group of the Jawne Memorial and Educational Center are very welcome!