Aycan Demirel’s nonprofit Kiga fights rising national prejudices by teaching the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in classrooms
BY MIRIAM DAGAN for The Times of Israel
BERLIN — Dervis Hizarci is a practicing Muslim, a German citizen of Turkish origin, and a guide in Berlin’s Jewish Museum. His services aren’t available to just anyone: Hizarci’s job is to guide teenagers from the surrounding Kreuzberg neighborhood, one of Berlin’s main migrant districts. Today, his visitors are a class of mostly Muslim students from a nearby high school.
Hizarci begins the tour with a question: How long does German-Jewish history span? For reference, he adds that Turkish-German history is about 50 years old. A student volunteers: 350 years? Hizarci tells them the answer: 2,000 years.
Next, he talks about another number: six million Jews killed in the Holocaust. To give the students a sense of scale, he adds that today there are around three million people of Turkish origin living in Germany. The teens seem surprised and moved.
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