Rostock (dpa/mv) – For an illustrated documentation on the attack in Rostock-Lichtenhagen, Rostock schoolchildren have been awarded the main prize in the school competition for political education by the Federal Agency for Political Education. “Your discussion is an invaluable contribution to the culture of remembrance and enriches history lessons. The documentation illustrates the devastating extent of xenophobia,” said Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania’s Minister of Education, Simone Oldenburg (Die Linke), according to a statement on Thursday.
For their project, the eleventh-grade students of Rostock’s inner-city grammar school interviewed two contemporary witnesses and analyzed the attack in a differentiated manner. The young people receive prize money of 2000 euros.
In August 1992, to the applause of thousands of onlookers, residents and neo-Nazis attacked the central reception center for asylum seekers and a dormitory for Vietnamese workers in Rostock-Lichtenhagen for several days and partly set them on fire.
For the competition, students had developed around 1,600 projects on twelve politically current topics. The aim of the competition is to encourage young people to deal with political issues outside of the curriculum.
