The EU-funded project ROVA – Roma CSOs promoting EU Values supports up to 120 Roma organizations and other groups working with Roma communities in Romania, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Bulgaria, Spain and across Europe. The projects address a wide range of topics including unequal access to education, local capacity building, and civic engagement.
The comprehensive initiative is accompanied by targeted, needs-based capacity building in local and national contexts. Roma organizations are given long-term support and empowered to advocate for fundamental EU values in their communities and contexts. The project promotes equality, strengthens civic and democratic participation, and raises awareness of the human rights situation of Roma in the target countries.

It is implemented by the ERGO Network in collaboration with five cooperation partners in the target countries (Autonomia in Hungary, Nevo Parudimos in Romania, FAGIC in Spain, Integro Association in Bulgaria, and Romanonet in the Czech Republic). The project is funded by the European Commission under the CERV program. The EVZ Foundation is also involved and supports the project consortium in shaping the capacity building measures for funded organizations. 

The first call for applications for project funding will be published on the project website on June 5, 2025. Further national and Europe-wide calls will follow. 

Young Civil Societies for Democracy!

This new pilot program being run by the EVZ Foundation is aimed at young organizations based in Germany, Ukraine, Poland, and Georgia, as well as Belarusian exile organizations. The focus is on democracy, resilience, and strengthening emerging civil society. Projects are funded that encourage young people to engage in democracy and human rights education and strengthen their long-term involvement.

Historical eyewitnesses meet with young people: a review of the 80th anniversary of liberation

The EVZ Foundation supported the participation of 42 survivors and their companions at memorial events held at Ravensbrück Memorial, Sachsenhausen Memorial and Museum, Dachau Concentration Camp Memorial Site, and Bullenhuser Damm Memorial in Hamburg. 22 of them accepted the invitation and traveled from Europe, Israel, North and South America. Alongside commemorations, the focus was on intergenerational dialog: at Thalia Theater in Hamburg, twin sisters Andra and Tatiana Bucci shared their memories of surviving the children’s barrack in Auschwitz with some 500 school students.

The series EVZ Conversations!  is touring Europe

To mark its 25th anniversary, the EVZ Foundation is organizing a series of events with long-standing partners in its focus countries. The successful launch took place on April 24, 2025, in Warsaw, featuring a panel discussion entitled Still complicated? Shared Polish-German history, fragmented memory. The event was held in partnership with the German Historical Institute Warsaw and the Foundation for Polish-German Reconciliation. 

The next EVZ Conversations! event is set to take place in Prague: as a partner of this year’s Memory Studies Conference the EVZ Foundation will be hosting a discussion at 2:00 p.m. on July 14, 2025 exploring the Czech-German culture of remembrance, enriched with the international perspectives of experts from academia and the cultural sphere. The event is being held in cooperation with the Czech-German Fund for the Future.

“The Nazis called them ‘asocials’ and career criminals”

The new anthology by Frank Nonnenmacher gives a voice to 22 descendants and family members of these marginalized Nazi victims, a group still rarely acknowledged in German remembrance culture. The publication emerged from an EVZ-funded project aimed at organizing descendants of Nazi victims identified by the green or black triangle and advocating for their recognition in Germany’s memory culture. The project had a lasting impact for an additional reason: it led to the founding of vevon, the association for the remembrance of forgotten victims of National Socialism in 2023.

In April, dedicated individuals from nine countries – including Poland, Germany, Israel and Ukraine – came together for an international networking meeting held as part of the EVZ Foundation’s program local.history. The event was hosted by the Brama Grodzka Theater Center in Lublin. The program included workshops, discussions, and a visit to the Majdanek Memorial, where participants engaged in conversations about the impact of the Holocaust. local.history project leaders presented their initiatives, such as the oral history project Roma Community Chronicles by the Kherson City Association of Young Roma, and the exhibition Children of the Holocaust by the Litvak Jewish Community in Vilnius. At an open bar camp – an informal, participant-led workshop format – attendees further pursued their own topics. The meeting concluded with a communal Shabbat dinner featuring Yiddish songs.

Ruins & Dreams: Ukrainian youth organizations in crisis

Russia’s critical memory

In 2022, the EVZ Foundation commissioned the independent Levada Center in Moscow to conduct a representative survey on the culture of remembrance in Russia. The study was designed and its findings assessed by Lev Gudkov and Natalja Zorkaya. Dr. Ralf Possekel (EVZ Foundation) compared selected findings with those of the EVZ’s MEMO studies, which explore remembrance in Germany against the backdrop of growing anti-democratic and populist trends.
The results paint a nuanced picture: at the time, only about 10 percent of the Russian population expressed explicitly critical views on current developments. Nonetheless, around 20 percent showed potential for critical engagement with memory culture – potential that can be supported through educational work.
The full study Russia’s Critical Memory was published in late 2024 in the journal OSTEUROPA.

Petitions to the Pope: Pius XII and the Holocaust

During World War II, around 15,000 Jewish individuals wrote petitions to Pope Pius XII pleading for help to escape National Socialist persecution. The EVZ Foundation is co-funding the research project Asking the Pope for Help, led by Prof. Dr. Hubert Wolf at the University of Münster. The project is studying these letters, which became accessible following the opening of the Vatican archives in 2020, with the aim of compiling the petitions into a publicly accessible digital edition. The ZDF documentary highlights moving personal stories, including that of Ilan Claudio Jacobi and his family, who went into hiding in a convent in Rome on October 16, 1943 – after Ilan’s mother had written to the Pope asking for help. 

JUNE 12 – JULY 5 BERLIN

Inspired by Barbara Yelin’s graphic novel The Color of Memory, the youth ensemble Angestrahlt  brings the story of Ravensbrück survivor Emmie Arbel to the stage. Developed in cooperation with Ravensbrück Memorial, the production offers powerful insights into remembrance, trauma and resistance. Special offer for school groups: they can combine a visit to the theater performance with a guided tour of the former women’s concentration camp. The premiere is on June 12 at Theater Strahl, Ostkreuz; closing performance: July 13 at Ravensbrück Memorial.

JUNE 12, BREMEN, KULTURZENTRUM KUKOON

Gedenkanstoß tour: Whose responsibility? How memory culture is changing in a migration society

JUNE 26, CHEMNITZ, DOCUMENTATION CENTRE ON THE NSU COMPLEX

Gedenkanstoß  tour: addressing gaps in remembrance: observe, remember, act