We actively participated in the Seminar for Mentors of History Clubs at the Slovenian Association of Friends of Youth
The Slovenian School Museum has cooperated with the Slovenian Association of Friends of Youth for many years, and this year’s collaboration has been particularly fruitful. The seminar for history club mentors entitled ‘The Resonance of Difference: Coexistence of Cultures, Religions and Nationalities”, held on 21 October 2025 in the Knights’ Hall of the National Museum of Contemporary History of Slovenia, brought together mentors, researchers and experts. Through their lectures, they explored how diverse historical paths co-shape our shared spaces of understanding, tolerance and coexistence.
Mag Marjetka Balkovec Debevec, the Museum Councillor and Chair of the Commission for the Work of History Clubs, opened the event with her introductory lecture ‘The Resonance of Difference: Coexistence of Cultures, Religions and Nationalities’. She emphasised that educating young people in diversity and coexistence is all the more important and necessary at a time of so much misunderstanding, hostility, war and conflict in the world. Understanding is only possible through dialogue.
Two of our museum’s curators also presented papers at the seminar. Matic Intihar, a curator documentalist, presented the history, life and disappearance of the ‘Gottscheer’ German minority using the example of the village of Koprivnik in the Kočevje region. He highlighted various historical examples of intolerance that have shaped the fate of the Gottscheer minority and its heritage.
Museum consultant Anton Arko discussed the coexistence of the Slovenian and Italian peoples in the Primorska territory that was assigned to the Kingdom of Italy after World War I. He traced the evolution from extreme intolerance towards the Slovenian nation a century ago to the current coexistence of Slovenian and Italian nationalities, cultures and languages.
A total of 11 speakers participated in the event. Proceedings of scientific and professional papers were published on this occasion, edited by Mag Marjetka Balkovec Debevec, Mateja Ribarič, and Iris Furlan from the Slovenian Association of Friends of Youth.
As the Chair of the Commission, our curator Mag Marjetka Balkovec Debevec devotedly and wholeheartedly took care of the development of the History Clubs. She actively brought mentors together and encouraged young people to explore the past with an abundance of goodwill. This year, she will hand over her mandate to her successors.
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ABOUT THE YOUNG HISTORY RESEARCHERS PROGRAMME
Since 1969, the Commission for the Work of History Clubs, operating professionally under the auspices of the Slovenian Association of Friends of Youth, has provided continuous training in researching the local past for young people in primary schools throughout Slovenia. The Young History Researchers programme is managed entirely voluntary by the Commission for the Work of History Clubs. Each year, the Commission chooses a new research topic and organises an autumn seminar for history club mentors, featuring lectures by renowned experts. These lectures are also published as papers in the scientific and professional proceedings of the same name.
