In the darkness

Discovering events from the local past

During September 2024 - December 2025, students from the "Iulia Hasdeu" Theoretical High School in Lugoj will be involved in the Facts not Fiction project, a project in which schools from several European countries participate and coordinated by EuroClio - European Association of History Educators and the Intercultural Institute of Timisoara.

As part of this project, on November 21, 2024, the students involved in the activities visited the Museum of History, Ethnography and Art in Lugoj. Here, the students visited the modern and contemporary history section and discovered the history of the city in which they live and discovered various objects from that period.

The next day, a specialist from the Museum offered the students involved in the project the opportunity to study the Museum's newspaper collection from the period 1938-1945. The students discovered information about how anti-Semitic laws and the war affected the lives of the Jewish population in Lugoj.

Visiting Bucharest

Students of the “Iulia Hasdeu” Theoretical High School in Lugoj involved in the international project Facts not Fiction – Young Historians Show How to Learn From the Past, a project implemented by EuroClio-European Association of History Educators and the Intercultural Institute of Timișoara, participated in a learning activity on the Holocaust in Bucharest, on January 23, 2025.

As part of this activity, the students visited the Coral Temple and the Holocaust Memorial, where they discussed the Bucharest Pogrom (January 21-23, 2025) and participated in an interactive lesson at the “Elie Wiesel” National Institute for Holocaust Studies in Romania (INSHR), during which Ms. Ana Bărbulescu, an expert at the institute, spoke to the students about anti-Semitic legislation and the Holocaust in Transnistria.

First test

On Monday, March 3, 2025, took place the first test of the pedagogical material / graphic novel „In the darknes”. Students from France and Romania learned about the Holocaust in Romania based on the material „In the darknes”, created by students from the „Iulia Hasdeu” Theoretical High School in Lugoj as part of the "Facts, not fiction" project.

Local workshop conducted by an artist/cartoonist where students learn to create a graphic novel

As part of the project, on Thursday, March 13, 2025, the students involved participated in a two-hour workshop in which they learned the general principles of creating a comic book / graphic novel. The Timișoara artist who held the workshop was Tudor Vidoni, a young comic book creator, who is, among others, the author of the albums "In the Dark" (2022) and "Consecințele promovării" (2023). Tudor Vidoni collaborated on the creation of the collective graphic albums "Dracula in Comic Books" (2024), "Istoria contrafactuală" (2023), "Frica în Istorie" (2021).

During the workshop, HasdEU students learned about the importance of the layout of a graphic novel, the techniques used to convey the characters' feelings and the intensity of scenes, and the stages of creating a comic.

At the end of the meeting, the students discussed with the graphic artist, asking for advice for the graphic novel they want to create.