On 21 May 2016, the President of Latvia, Raimonds Vējonis, opened the EUSTORY award ceremony in the “Riga Latvian Society House”. He expressed his gratitude saying: "The time in which we live affects our options and choices, but it also determines our responsibility for our land and country. Without knowledge of history and respect for it, there is no future. Looking at you, competition winners, I am proud and I know that Latvia is in safe hands."
Four coordinators of EUSTORY history competitions from Germany, Russia, Poland and the Czech Republic were asked the same questions about World War II – and gave some very different answers.
On 6 May 2016, seven participants of the 17th Estonian EUSTORY History Competition were awarded for their works on the topic of »Estonian Cause«. The ceremony was held at the Ministry of Education and Research. Toomas Hendrik Ilves, President of the Republic of Estonia, stated: »We all became much wiser in the aspect of how diverse and rich our own Estonian cause is.«
On April 15, 2016 the award ceremony of Belarusian EUSTORY History Competition for university students took place in Minsk. The contest itself was held in 2015, with its topic being “The Chernobyl catastrophe and its consequences in the memory of dwellers of Belarus”.
On 1 December 2015, the Polish EUSTORY History Competition »Historia bliska« invited its prize winners to the Museum of Independence in Warsaw to receive their awards. To honour the students’ achievements, Fundacja Ośrodka KARTA (KARTA Center), the competition’s organiser, had invited experts from the field of historical research who praised the results.
On 17 November, German Federal President Joachim Gauck hosted the award ceremony of the 24th round of the German history competition in Bellevue Palace in Berlin, his official residence. The topic of the competition was "Being Different. Outsiders in History" and more than 5,000 young people sent in a total of 1,563 contributions.
Seventy years after the end of the Second World War we are faced with the declining number of eye witnesses of the events. Those who are still among us were children when they had to experience the atrocities of a world on the battlefields
