“What is this price for? It is not for a success in spoorts or a good essay that you have written. Rather, it is a recognition for your human commitment.” With this appeal, Margot Friedländer congratulated the young winners of the Margot Friedländer Award 2018.

Three school projects were awarded on March 6, 2018 at the Max Liebermann Haus in Berlin. Over the next few months, the award winners will be working on digital projects on Jewish life in Hamburg and Saxony, as well as researching the deportation of the Sinti in Braunschweig.

The laudatio was held by the President of the German Bundestags Dr. Wolfgang Schäuble. André Schmitz-Schwarzkopf handed the awards over together with Margot Friedländer. The young Cello Trio Marei Schibilsky, Jae-Seung Lee and Fabian Sturm of the Julius Stern Institute accompanied the evening with music.

Margot Friedländer Awardees 2018

• “Only together does ERINNERN – MEET – RESPECT”, Joseph Carlebach School Hamburg (1st place, 5.000 €). 11th grade students are developing an app to go through the former Bornplatz Synagogue in Hamburg. In addition, encounter projects are initiated.
• “The Sinti in Braunschweig yesterday, today and tomorrow”, Nibelungen Secondary School Braunschweig (2nd place, 1.000 €). The group will accompany the commemoration of the 75th anniversary of the deportation of the Brunswick Sinti in an interview and research project.
• “Never again! Never Again! “, High school” An der Mulde “in Rochlitz, Saxony (3rd place, 600 €). Ten young people from primary and secondary school classes work on a newspaper on Jewish life before, during and after the Holocaust. Music, food and festivals, which are worked with eyewitnesses play a role.

We would like to sincerely thank all supporters of the Margot-Friedländer-Prize: The program “Democracy Live!” by the the Federal Ministry of Family Affairs, Ernst & Young and the Berliner Sparkasse.

Since 2014, the Margot Friedländer Award encourages  young people to engage with research on the Holocaust, its testimony and to stand up against today’s forms of anti-Semitism, racism and exclusion. The projects are not yet completed at the time of the award ceremony. The new call for the Margot-Friedländer Award 2019 will be launched in June.