On 12 March 2026, Denise Callan from the ARENAS team joined an online conference hosted by Jagiellonian University as part of the EU-funded Memory Makers project — an educational initiative supported under the EU CERV programme that is dedicated to engaging young people in historical education and remembrance.
Memory Makers aims to empower young individuals to learn and share historical narratives in innovative ways. Through a programme of ten events over 20 months, the project brings together at least 800 people to explore and amplify lesser-known historical and Holocaust narratives affecting LGBTQ+ individuals, disabled people, and Roma Gypsies — communities whose stories are often overlooked in mainstream history discussions. According to Lola Gonzalez, who is a member of the Memory Makers consortium, “Our Memory Makers project aims to show that remembrance needs to be active in informing how to react to the world around us. We give tools for critical thinking so that patterns of discrimination and misinformation can be challenged. We do so by sharing historical narratives that affected marginalised groups during the Holocaust. These groups include Roma, disabled people, LGBTQI+ communities, and women. Our focus is to engage young people with the past not just to educate but to build courage and empathy so they challenge injustices of today. By taking these steps, they help influence decisions to form more inclusive communities, and affect human rights from local to policy levels”.
The conference aimed to present the political, cultural, and social context and challenges related to contemporary Holocaust education, covering remembrance policies in Central and Eastern Europe — including Hungary, Poland, and Slovakia — as well as the challenges of the post-witness era and the growing impact of artificial intelligence on the distortion of Holocaust history.
The online event featured eight expert presentations. Speakers included Bori Klacsmann on interpretations of the Holocaust in Hungary, Filip Koźmiński on the rehabilitation of cleric-dignitaries in Slovak post-communist discourse, and Agnieszka Gawlas-Zajączkowska on the foundations of Polish memory policy in relation to the Holocaust. Anna Ziębińska-Witek examined selective memory in Polish historical museums, Agnieszka Witkowska-Krych addressed the overuse of Janusz Korczak as a symbol, Kinga Gajda explored sensory museum practices and Holocaust memory in post-witness times using Berlin as a case study, Bartosz Kwieciński tackled AI and the visual distortion of Holocaust memory, and Bożena Keff raised the question of the connection between Gaza and Holocaust education.
The themes explored at this conference align closely with the core work of ARENAS. The conference’s examination of how political forces shape Holocaust memory in countries like Hungary and Poland directly speaks to ARENAS’s research into how extremist and nationalist narratives are historically rooted and politically instrumentalised. ARENAS’s overall objective is to characterise, measure, and understand the role of extremist narratives in discourses that have an impact not only on political and social spheres, but importantly on the stakeholders themselves.
The session on AI and the distortion of Holocaust memory is especially pertinent, as disinformation and digital manipulation are central concerns for ARENAS in understanding how extremist narratives spread and take hold in contemporary society.
Attending events like this Memory Makers conference enables ARENAS to remain connected to the broader European conversation about memory, education, and the fight against dangerous narratives, reinforcing the shared commitment to building more inclusive, historically literate, and resilient societies across Europe. It also offered an opportunity to introduce ARENAS to the conference attendees and share information on the project to a wider audience who in turn can share ARENAS work with their networks.