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.

Annual EuroClio Conference in Bratislava

Along high school students from several European countries, two of the best illustrators in the project, Flavius ​​Doran and Andreea Szücz, participated, between 3-6 April 2025, in the XXXI Annual EuroClio Conference of History Teachers, held in Bratislava, Slovakia. During the 4 days of the conference, the Hasdeu students participated in several workshops, where they learned to create teaching materials based on real historical documents, visited historical and cultural sites in Bratislava (and Vienna).  In the conference plenary session they presented the final product they were creating within the project, the graphic novel „In the Dark”.

At the event held in Bratislava, the two students had the opportunity to collaborate with other German, Serbian, Finnish and Slovakian young people involved in this project.

Workshop at the Banat National Museum

On May 7, 2025, 25 students from the „Iulia Hașdeu” Theoretical High School in Lugoj, together with their colleagues from the „Emanuil Ungureanu” Technical College in Timișoara, participated in a workshop held among the exhibits of the temporary exhibition „Belle Époque Woman: Beauty and Elegance” at the Banat National Museum.

The theme of the he workshop led by museographer Marius Cornea was the organization of an exhibition envisioned by the students starting from real objects and real questions. During the activity, the students from Hasdeu discovered objects and photographs from the period, including exhibits from Lugoj.

Testing de pedagogical potential of the grafic novel

The graphic novel was produced in three languages: Romanian, French and English, so as to be understood by a larger number of people. This helped us to test the pedagogical potential of the material together with our partners in France, from EPL de l’Oise (Lycée Agricole de l'Oise) in Airion.

A new stage of the “Facts, not fiction” project

On Thursday, November 13, 2025, a student training activity took place at the “Iulia Hasdeu” Theoretical High School in Lugoj within the framework of the international project “Facts, not fictions”. During this event, the final product created by the students of the Lugoj high school within the aforementioned project, the graphic novel “Prin înîtur”, was presented.

The high school students involved in creating the graphic novel presented to their colleagues the project stages, the research methods and the dilemmas they faced in creating the final product, especially due to the subject they learned about, the life of the Jewish and Roma population during World War II and the Holocaust.

In the second part of the activity, participating high school students had the opportunity to engage in a learning activity working with the pedagogical material / graphic novel “Prin înîtur”. Divided into several groups, the students had to solve various tasks based on authentic events and documents. At the end of the activity, each group presented to their colleagues what they learned by going through the educational material.