International Holocaust Remembrance Day

Find out what is happening on International Holocaust Remembrance Day in IHRA Member and Observer Countries. This information will be updated throughout January.

On 27 January 1945, the advancing Red Army entered the Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination camp complex, liberating more than 7,000 remaining prisoners, who were for the most part ill or dying.

Days earlier, the SS had forced nearly 60,000 prisoners to evacuate the camp and embark on the infamous 'Death Marches,' in which many thousands lost their lives.

The United Nations General Assembly passed Resolution 60/7 on 1 November 2005 to designate 27 January as the International Day of Commemoration in memory of the victims of the Holocaust, the day upon which every year the world would mark and remember the Holocaust and its victims. 71 years on from the liberation of Auschwitz, it is more important than ever to remind ourselves of the universal lessons of the Holocaust and to foster a shared culture of remembrance.

In 2017, the International Day of Commemoration will be marked by a number of national and international events. The following overview of commemoration events is based on information and links provided by IHRA Member Countries, Observer Countries, and permanent international partner organisations.

Member Countries: Argentina - Austria - Belgium - Canada - Croatia - Czech Republic - Estonia - Finland - France - Germany - Greece - Hungary -  Ireland - Israel - Italy - Latvia - Lithuania - Luxembourg - Netherlands - Norway - Poland - Romania - Slovenia - Slovakia -  Sweden - Switzerland -  United Kingdom - United States

Observer Countries: Australia - Albania - Bulgaria -  the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia - Turkey - Portugal

Permanent International Partners: UNESCO - United Nations

Argentina

In 2017 the main event to commemorate the International Day in Memory of the Victims of the Holocaust will take place on Wednesday 26th of January in Santa Fe City, Argentina. The event is organized by the National Secretary of Human Rights and Cultural Pluralism along with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the National Ministry of Education and Sports, the Government of the Province of Santa Fe, the Townhall of the City of Santa Fe and the organizations which make up the local IHRA chapter. Speeches will be held by national authorities and one holocaust survivor. Furthermore, musical and theatrical interpretations will be held, as well as the lighting of a Candle of Remembrance.
 

Austria

Last Places Before Deportation – the Assembly Camps in Leopoldstadt, Vienna. Survivors Tell Their Stories

The event will take place at the Austrian Academy of Sciences (Dr. Ignaz Seipel-Platz 2, 1010 Vienna) on 24^th January 2017 at 11am. It is hosted by the Austrian Parliament, in cooperation with the Institute for Cultural Sciences and the History of Theatre of the Austrian Academy of Sciences (ÖAW). The event is based on the exhibition of the same name, which is currently on display in the crypt of the Heldendenkmal and sheds light on the four assembly camps in Vienna’s Leopoldstadt that became the last places for over 45,000 Jews before they were deported from Vienna in 1941/42. Attendees will be welcomed by the President of the National Council Doris Bures and the President of the ÖAW, Anton Zellinger. A panel of respected historians moderated by Gerhard Baumgartner shall discuss the facts and background information and a clip will be shown from the film “Letzte Orte, Letzte Zeugen” (Vienna 2016). The event’s main highlight will be a conversation with the surviving eyewitnesses Arik Bauer, renowned painter, singer and poet, and Helga Feldner-Busztin, a medical doctor. The event will be attended by academics, politicians and an interested public. 

More information

Remembrance Ceremony at Vienna’s Heldenplatz 

This year’s event will be held under the motto: “72 Years After the War: No Resurgence of Ideologies of Inequality”. It will take place on Vienna’s Heldenplatz (Äußere Burgtor) on Holocaust Remembrance Day at 10am and commemorates the liberation of Auschwitz and remembers the countless victims of the Holocaust. It is organized by the association Jetzt Zeichen Setzen [“Send a Signal Now”], a broad alliance formed by members of civil society, which stands up against racist, antisemitic and sexist ideologies, right-wing agitation, discrimination and violence. Speeches will be held by prominent politicians and other persons of note, including Andreas Mailath-Pokorny, David Ellensohn and Oskar Deutsch, and music will be provided by the Jewish Choir Vienna. A large and diverse audience is expected, comprising members of civil society, survivors, politicians, people from the fields of culture, science and the arts, the media and young people.

Hour of Remembrance in Linz       

On 30 January 2017 at 7.30pm the Austrian Friends of Yad Vashem in cooperation with the City of Linz will hold an “Hour of Remembrance” at the Old Town Hall in Linz to mark International Holocaust Remembrance Day. Following words of welcome by the Chairman of the Austrian Friends, Günther Schuster, and an address by the Mayor of Linz, Klaus Luger, there will be a scenic reading of the diary of Etty Hillesum (1914–1943), adapted and directed by Dr. Johannes Neuhauser and performed by Bettina Buchholz, Katharina Wawrik, Georg Bonn and Erich Josef Langwiesner. Etty Hillesum was Jewish and kept her diary, in which she recorded her experiences, fears, encounters and thoughts, between 1941 and 1943. In 1943 she was murdered in Auschwitz - Birkenau. A supporting musical program will be provided by Simon Raab and Luci Karnig. The event will be attended by local politicians, prominent figures from the fields of art and culture and interested members of the public.

Belgium

Belgian Senate.

On Friday 27 January the plenary session of the Senate will observe “International Day of Remembrance for the Victims of the Holocaust”. Chairperson of the Senate, Ms. Defraigne will address the democratically elected representatives of the Belgian Nation remembering and honoring the victims of the Holocaust and other victims of the Nazi regime and draw lessons for present day society and for the future.

Venue: Belgian Senate. 27 January  10:00 a.m.

Institute of War Veterans – Defense Ministry.

One of the War Veterans Institute’s missions is “transmission of memories”. With the support of the Defense Ministry, the Institute organizes every year a round trip by plane from Brussels to Auschwitz, for young students. The study trip is presided over by the Defense Minister.

This year, 110 students will accompany the Defense Minister, Mr. Steven Vandeput.

Date: 24^th of January.

Kazerne Dossin - Mechelen: Evening with Simon Gronowski and Koenraad Tinel. 

The lawyer Simon Gronowski and the artist Koenraad Tinel were children during the Second World War. Simon was born into a Jewish family; his mother and sister perished in Auschwitz. Koenraad’s father was a Flemish nationalist who collaborated with the Nazi occupier. Sixty-five years later, they met and became friends. In honor of the International Holocaust Remembrance Day, Kazerne Dossin has invited those two friends to tell their story: how they lived with their families in Brussels and in Gent before the war, what the rise of Nazism meant for them, what happened to them during the war and how, as for so many, the memory of the genocide will always mark them. This story of fear, despair, hope, regret, friendship and forgiveness will be intermingled with fragments from the documentary ‘War children’. 

Venue: Kazerne Dossin: Memorial, Museum and Documentation Centre on Holocaust and Human Rights, Thursday 26 January 2017, 8pm 

Portraits and Deportation Lists of the Victims deported from Mechelen online 

On the occasion of the International Holocaust Remembrance Day, Kazerne Dossin will officially open the online availability of the deportation lists (Transportliste) and photographs of victims deported from Mechelen.

Eupen - German speaking Community of Belgium: Movie première :„Beate und Marlene. Eine Gesellschaft braucht die Ausnahmen“ (Beate and Marlene. A Community needs exceptions).  Director: Clemens Heinrich.

The movie focuses on the lives of Marlene Dietrich who in the US supported emigrants from Nazi Germany and of Beate Klarsfeld, who for many years has been working to punish perpetrators of crimes of the Nazi regime and to keep the memory of the Jewish victims of the Nazi regime alive. The film shows the biographies of these two women, in particular their anti-nazi attitudes and actions.  

Venue: Autonome Hochschule der DG, Monschauerstr. 57, B - 4700 Eupen.  Friday 27 January 2017, 7:30 pm.

« Génocides, violences de masse, résistance et bande dessinée » - (Genocide, mass violence, resistance and comic strip) 

Within the framework of International Day of Remembrante of the Victims of the Holocaust on 27th of January, the unit "Démocratie ou Barbarie" (Democracy or Barbarism) organises on 24th of January  a study day on the theme  Genocide, mass violence, resistance and comic strip/graphic novel. The contributors will take up the issue by presenting an overview or their own - or by another author -  comic strip. A closing round table will focus on the following questions: "How to draw the unspeakable? How does the comic strip handle these questions? Is this a medium through which young generations can be reached?"   

Venue:  Centre belge de la bande dessinée, rue des Sables 20 à 1000 Bruxelles - 24 January 2017 -09:00 -15:30.

Auschwitz Foundation – Essay competition “Link and Remember”  

The Auschwitz Foundation organizes every year on or around 27^th of January, Remembrance day for the victims of the Holocaust, an essay competition in the schools for students of the 9^th grade (age : +/-15). The competition aims at having students of all schools (public/ private; neutral/ religion based; general/technical…) reflecting on the theme “civic courage”. The theme is thus not exclusively linked to the past or to the concentration camps but may also treat more present day issues like “intolerance, racism, democratic values, civic education…” The laureats receive a diploma and are offered a free study trip to Auschwitz-Birkenau in 2017 (value 500€). The theme of 2017 is “In the name of democracy anything goes”.

Venue: Flemish and French speaking secondary schools

Date: on or around 27^th of January 2017

European Parliament

On Wednesday, the 25^th January, the European Parliament, in cooperation with the European Jewish Congress (EJC) will be holding the official annual International Holocaust Remembrance Day Ceremony and Reception.

The event, which will be attended by leading European Union officials, heads of European Jewish communities, diplomats and other figures will be the first official event hosted by the elected European Parliament President Antonio Tajani.

At the event, Dr. Moshe Kantor, President of the EJC, will talk about the depersonalization which led to the Holocaust, signs of which are still happening to this day.

“It is now more than 70 years since the annihilation of six million of Europe’s Jews and in that time, many more massacres and crimes against humanity have taken place around the world,” said Kantor. “Today, we can even sit in the comfort of our homes and watch them taking place live on our televisions and smart phones. We can even empathize in real time by sending a heartfelt tweet or sharing a Facebook post. And yet we do not prevent the genocide or the next one.”

“As long as we do not know names, identities, loves, fears, careers, relationships and experiences – as long as we cannot put a name or a picture to them – we cannot save them. They are faceless, which is exactly what the killers intended. It is because of this that we have devoted this International Holocaust Remembrance Day, here in the European Parliament, in 2017 to Restoring Identities of those who were murdered.”

Beate Klarsfeld, famed Nazi hunter and UNESCO Honorary Ambassador and Special Envoy for Education about the Holocaust and the Prevention of Genocide, will also be speaking at the event.

At the event, the European Council on Tolerance and Reconciliation will bestow the 2016 Medal of Tolerance on Andrei Konchalovsky, Film director, producer and screenwriter, author of “Paradise” for which he is a winner of the Silver Lion for Best Director and considered for a nomination at the 89th Academy Awards 2017.

Venue: Yehudi Menuhin Hall on Wednesday 25^th at 12.30pm.

Canada

Screening of the film "Denial" and discussion with Robert Jan van Pelt

Join the Montreal Holocaust Memorial Centre on 24 January at 7pm for the screening of the film, "Denial,” based on the libel suit brought against historian, Deborah Lipstadt and her publisher by Holocaust denier, David Irving. Following the film screening, a discussion will be held with Robert Jan van Pelt, who worked as an expert witness in Lipstadt’s groundbreaking trial and is world-renowned for his research about architecture and the Holocaust.

Venue: Montreal Holocaust Memorial Centre (5151 Chemin de la Côte-Sainte-Catherine)

Free tickets via Eventbrite

Consult the museum website

See the Facebook event

Holocaust Survivors talk about their experiences

Learn about the history of the Holocaust from those who survived it. Join us on International Holocaust Remembrance Day (27 January) from 10am - 3pm to hear testimony from survivors, Ted Bolgar (in English at 11 am) and Elie Dawang (in French at 1 pm) highlighting their personal experiences during the Shoah, and take a self-guided tour of the Museum free of charge.

Venue: Montreal Holocaust Memorial Centre (5151 Chemin de la Côte-Sainte-Catherine)

Consult the museum website

Exhibition: "Destroyed Synagogues in Germany: A Virtual Reconstruction" 

International Holocaust Remembrance Day in Winnipeg will be the launch of the exhibit,  "Destroyed Synagogues in Germany: A Virtual Reconstruction" at the Mennonite Heritage Gallery on January 28 at 7:30 pm. The Freeman Family Holocaust Education Centre is a co-sponsor of the exhibit along with the University of Manitoba. The exhibit will continue until March 11 and will include a pedagogical unit which will sent out to educators throughout the province of Manitoba. Admission is free. More information.

Remembering Elie Wiesel and Yaffa Eliach

In Halifax, the Atlantic Jewish Council presents Remembering Elie Wiesel and Yaffa Eliach, a tribute featuring a visual display, music and readings on Thursday, January 26 at 6:30 p.m. at Paul O’Regan Hall, Halifax Central Library.  This is an event for International Holocaust Remembrance Day, and includes Olga Milosevich, retired CBC Radio broadcaster; Garry Williams, Artistic Director of DaPoPo Theatre, Dr. Dorota Glowacka from University of King’s College and David Korn, Holocaust survivor.
 
Elie Wiesel, Nobel Peace Prize-winning author and Holocaust survivor, whose work for Holocaust remembrance continues to influence, passed away ‪on July 2, 2016. Dr. Yaffa Eliach, prominent and pioneering scholar of the Holocaust and survivor who launched the first Center for Holocaust Studies Documentation and Research in the USA, passed away ‪on November 8, 2016. The event is presented by the Atlantic Jewish Council and the University of King's College with the support of the Halifax Central Library and is free and open to all. 

The Evidence Room

On 29 January at 11am the Sarah and Chaim Neuberger Holocaust Education Centre is proud to present the Toronto book launch of The Evidence Room, documenting the architecture of the Auschwitz gas chamber. The book is the companion piece to the acclaimed exhibit which premiered at the 2016 Venice Architecture Biennale. The architects and producers present a discussion on this haunting exhibition and catalogue. Read more here.  

Presented in partnership with New Jewish Press and the Anne Tanenbaum Centre for Jewish Studies, University of Toronto. Generously supported by the Esther Bem Memorial Fund.

Venue: Vivian and David Campbell Conference Facility | Munk School of Global Affairs | University of Toronto, 1 Devonshire Place

Winnipeg City Council

On 27 January, IHRA Delegate and Chair of the Freeman Family Foundation Holocaust Education Centre, addressed the Mayor of Winnipeg and the City Council. The Mayor of Winnipeg, Brian Bowman and Councillor Marty Morantz also spoke. Mayor Bowman officially acknowledged International Holocaust Remembrance Day in the City of Winnipeg and announced that the flag will fly at half-mast on the 27th from sunrise to sunset.

Image: Mayor Bowman (right), Belle Jarniewski and Councillor Morantz.

Croatia

At the occasion of 27 January official delegation of the Croatian Parliament and Government laid wreaths at the bottom of the Monument of Moses at the City Cemetery of Zagreb (Mirogoj), headed by the President of the Parliament Božo Petrov, and Vice-President of the Government Davor Ivo Stier. A moment of silence was held for the victims of Holocaust during the session of the Croatian Parliament.

Croatian Academy of Science and Art released a statement in which they accentuated that remembering the victims of such a daunting evil should remain an imperative for continual spread of atmosphere of tolerance and dialogue.

Ceremonies and various occasional activities were held in many Croatian towns, organized by local authorities, antifascist organizations and Jewish communities, among the others in Osijek, Virovitica, Varaždin, Rijeka, etc. Cultural institutions, schools and National Television joined with educational programs, video-conferences, exhibitions, and film projections, including appearance and discussions of historians. In the French pavilion in Zagreb, which was one of the spots from where Jews were deported to the concentration camps, the exhibition of Andrew M. Mezvinsky, entitled A Good Day, was opened in the presence and with participation of Branko Lustig, the Auschwitz survivor and president of the Festival of Tolerance, the Mayor of Zagreb Milan Bandić and the Austrian Ambassador Andreas Wiedenhoff.

Four-day training course on the Holocaust education was held in Koprivnica, from 24 to 27 January, organized by the Education and Teacher Training Agency, for Croatian primary and secondary-school teachers, and hosting domestic and foreign lecturers-experts from the field. The head of the Teacher Training Agency Jadranka Žarković-Pečenković, Mayor of Koprivnica Mišel Jakšić, head of the Koprivničko-križevačka County Darko Koren, and Zina Kalay Kleitman, the Ambassador of the State of Israel in the Republic of Croatia attended the opening. The program is available here. A visit to the Danica Memorial Area, at the place of Ustasha detention camp, near Koprivnica, was organized not only for participants of the seminar, but also for the school children.

Shoah Academy of the Jewish Community in Zagreb organized one-day seminar entitled Historians About Jasenovac, with participation of the prominent historians-experts in the field. The program included projection of Bogdan Žižić's film entitled Jasenovac.

The program is available at the website of the Jewish Community.

Czech Republic

On 27 January a commemorative event will be held in the Senate, the Upper Chamber of the Parliament of the Czech Republic.

Estonia

Holocaust Remembrance Day commemoration ceremony in Tallinn at Rahumäe Jewish Cemetery

Addresses will be given by:

•  Ms Mailis Reps, Minister of Education and Research
• Ms Alla Jakobson, Chairman of the Jewish Community of Estonia
• H.E. Mr Søren Kelstrup, Danish Ambassador to Estonia, Doyen of the Diplomatic Corps

Prayer by Shmuel Kot, Chief Rabbi in Estonia

Holocaust Remembrance Day conference for educators, subject of the conference is „Holocaust in Film“

• Opening remarks by Ms. Malle Talvet-Mustonen, Head of Estonian Delegation to the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance and by

Mr. Amnon-Juzef Luvishtshuk, Reprentative of the Jewish Community of Estonia.

Presentation „Holocaust in Film“ will be delivered by a documentary film marker, producer and historian Mr Riho Västrik. A short film „Manna“ shown is about Estonian Jews who were murdered in the Pärnu synagogue in the summer of 1941. There will be also a screening of video interview (by Malle Talvet-Mustonen) with Holocaust survivor Theodor Balberyszsky and later workshop for teachers „Using film and video as learning tools in Holocaust education“.

The conference is organized in cooperation with the Unitas Foundation, Estonian Institute of Historical Memory, Ministry of Education and Science, International Holocaust Remembrance Allience, Estonian Atlantic Treaty Association, Konrad Adenauer Stiftung and Youth Agency.

On International Holocaust Remembrance Day both Jewish Museum and History Museum are open, in the History Museum there is a special presentation of the exhibiton „State on the chessboard. Nazi occupation in Estonia 1941-1944“. 

Tuhamäe

A locally organized commemoration ceremony took place at Tuhamäe, Ida-Virumaa county, at the place where Jewish prisoners of the Vaivara system of prisons were shot in 1941-1944.

Finland

The main remembrance event will this year be held on 26 January in Helsinki. The venue is Säätytalo (House of the Estates) a former parliament meeting hall nowadays used mainly for government presentations. The main organizer of the event is the Finnish Holocaust Remembrance Association, a politically and religiously unaffiliated NGO. Among the attendees, some 150 guests, are represented the membership of the association, the Finnish Jewish and Roma communities, civil society, university, NGO and government partners, religious communities and representatives of foreign countries. This year the ambassadors of Denmark, Austria, Germany and Israel will address participants at the event. The event includes speeches and music, followed by a short reception. The main speakers this year will Prime Minister Juha Sipilä, representing the Finnish government and Cecilie Felicia Stokholm Banke, representing this years’ partner country, Denmark, and the Danish Institute for International Studies. Cecilie Felicia Stokholm Banke is Head of the Danish Delegation to the IHRA.

France

From 25-28 January a national meeting between young “remembrance ambassadors” (on the initiative of the French Holocaust Memorial Sites Network) will be held at the Mémorial de la Shoah. 

The flame under the Arc de Triomphe will be reignited by the Union des Déportés d’Auschwitz on the 27th of January at 6 pm. 

There will be a ceremony at the synagogue at the Place des Vosges, attended by the Great Rabbi of Paris and the President of the Consistory on the 25^th of January at 7 pm.

The film Drancy, dernière étape avant l’abîme, by Cécile Clairval-Milhaud, will be shown during a commemoration at the Cercle Bernard Lazare on the 26^th of January at 8.30 pm.

The film Le Survivant Matricule 157279 will be shown at the Farband in the presence of Nicolas Ribowski, the film director, on the 23^rd of January at 7.45 pm.

The play Personne ne m’aurait cru, alors je me suis tu, based on the testimony of Sam Braun, former deportee, will be performed at the Théâtre de l’Epée de bois in Vincennes, from the 24th to the 28th of January.

The Mémorial de la Shoah coordinates, with the support of the Ministry of Defence and the National Office of Veterans and War Victims, commemorations with a pedagogical purpose, in partnership with the Œuvre Nationale du Bleuet de France and 10 institutions in charge of memorial sites linked with persecution, internment, deportation and extermination of French Jews.

Partners:

Maison d’Izieu (01) 
Memorial site of the camp des Milles (13)
Memorial site of Chambon-sur-Lignon (43) 
Cercil - Musée-mémorial des enfants du Vél' d’Hiv’, Orléans (45) 
Mémorial de l'internement et de la déportation, camp de Royallieu-Compiègne (60) 
Amicale du camp de Gurs (64) 
Mémorial du camp de Rivesaltes (66) 
Centre européen du résistant déporté - Struthof-Natzweiler (67) 
Centre d'histoire de la Résistance et de la Déportation in Lyon (69) 
Mémorial de Montluc (69) 
Mémorial de la Shoah, Paris (75), Drancy (93) and Toulouse (31)

In Rothau (67), the Garden of Remembrance and Human Rights will be inaugurated in front of the Rothau station through which deportees were taken to camp Natzweiler-Struthof, on the 27^th of January at 10 am.

Concerning media, Arte will hold a special evening on the theme “Liberation from the camps” on the 24^th of January, from 8.30 pm. At 8.50 pm, the documentary Beate et Serge Klarsfeld : le combat d’une vie, by Wolfgang Schoen, will be shown, followed by the documentary Sauver Auschwitz, by Jonathan Hayoun, supported by the Fondation pour la Mémoire de la Shoah at 10.40 pm..

The education community is encouraged to take part in the organization of this Remembrance Day. The homepage Enseigner l'histoire de la Shoah, set up by the Mémorial de la Shoah and the French Education Ministry, gathers useful information for teachers.

A new edition of Album d’Auschwitz will be released, with a DVD and an internet documentary to put it in perspective with the album by Karl Höcker, deputy captain of Auschwitz.

Mémoires de la Shoah - Grands entretiens de l'INA is a series of 115 filmed interviews of witnesses (deportees, hidden children, members of the Resistance, Righteous) and historians, coproduced by the INA and the Fondation pour la Mémoire de la Shoah.

Mémoire Demain - Témoignages de déportés filmés à Auschwitz-Birkenau is a DVD produced by the Union des Déportés d’Auschwitz, with the support of the Fondation pour la Mémoire de la Shoah.

Mémoires européennes des camps nazis is an internet documentary which offers a theoretical reflection on issues linked with teaching deportation in Nazi internment and extermination camps, produced by Canopé network.

Germany

Opening of the exhibition "Bricks, Shoes, Me -Reflections from Auschwitz"

An exhibition organised by the International Auschwitz Committee in cooperation with the Gedenkstätte Deutscher Widerstand and the International Youth Meeting Centre in Oswiecim/Auschwitz. The exhibition will be opened by Mr. Sigmar Gabriel, the Vice-Chancellor of Germany and Prof. Felix Kolmer, Auschwitz survivor from Prague.

Venue: Gedenkstätte Deutscher Widerstand, Stauffenbergstraße 13-14, Berlin

An evening dedicated to Felka Platek and Felix Nussbaum

On 26 January at 19:30 the International Auschwitz Committee and the City of Wolfsburg, together with the organisation "Hallenbad-Kultur am Schachtweg", are organising an evening dedicated to the Jewish artists Felka Platek and Felix Nussbaum. The evening will feature a reading by Eva-Maria Kurz and Gerd Grasse as well as music by Goran Stevanovic, accordian.

Venue: Hallenbad-Kultur am Schachtweg, Schachtweg 31, 38440 Wolfsburg

Greece

National Remembrance Day of the Greek Jews Martyrs and Heroes of the Holocaust.
Sunday 29 January 2017

The event is organised by the Jewish Community of Thessaloniki and the Region of Central Macedonia.

Main Ceremony
Frida Liappa Hall, Warehouse D, Port of Thessaloniki
11.00 Arrivals
11.30 Memorial Service
11.45 Addresses
- Representative of the Government
- Ambassador of Israel Ms. Irit Ben Abba
- Governor of the Region of Central Macedonia, Mr. Apostolos Tzitzikostas
- Deputy Head of the Metropolitan Unit of Thessaloniki, Ms. Paraskevi Patoulidou
- Mayor of Thessaloniki, Mr. Yiannis Boutaris
- President of the Central Board of the Jewish Communities in Greece and of the Jewish Community of Thessaloniki, Mr. David Saltiel
12.15 Keynote: President of the New Democracy Party and Leader of the Opposition Mr. Kyriakos Mitsotakis
12.30 Awarding of the "Righteous Among the Nations” title of Yad Vashem to Spyridon G. Stavridis, for the rescue the family of Joseph Menachem Stroumtsa during the Holocaust
12.45 Music interlude: MEMORY I

Holocaust Monument of the Jews of Thessaloniki, Eleftherias Square
13.15 Wreath laying

Jewish Museum of Thessaloniki, 13, Agiou Mina Str.
14.00 Opening of the exhibition "The day after the Holocaust"

Other events:
Painting Exhibition: "The other alphabet"
• Saturday, January 28, 2017, 19:30 (Foyer, Emilios Riadis Hall M2)
The exhibition presents 23 works of the artist Samuel Tampoch.
Theatrical performance: "The students of Umberto Primo" Thessaloniki Concert Hall . – Theater Company “Dream”
• Saturday, January 28, 2017, 21:00 (Emilios Riadis Hall M2)
• Sunday 29 January 2017, 17:00 (Emilios Riadis Hall M2)
Screening of the film: "Turkish Passport». Consulate General of Turkey, Jewish Community of Thessaloniki, Thessaloniki International Film Festival
• Wednesday, February 1, 2017, 19:30 (John Cassavetes Hall Warehouse A, Port of Thessaloniki)
Theatrical Performance: "Terror and misery of the Third Reich", by the third grade students of the Deskeio Junior High School of Parga
• Thursday, February 2, 2017, 19:00 (Vafopoulio Cultural Center, 3 Vafopoulou Str.)

Full programme in Greek.

Greek Parliament:  In the presence of the Speaker of the Greek Parliament, the Ceremony for the Holocaust Remembrance took place in the room of the Senate on Friday 27^th January. Members of the Parliament, representatives of institutions and the Ambassador of Israel in Athens were also present. Discourses were addressed by the Speaker of the Parliament, the Minister of Education, the Chairman of the Foreign Relations and Defense Committee of the Parliament and the Chairman of the Greek-Israeli Committee. A second ceremony took place in the colonnade of the Parliament, in front of the memorial plate honouring the Jewish members of the Greek Parliament who perished during the Holocaust.

Ministry of Education: The Ministry of Education, Research and Religious Affairs communicated to schools (circular ref. 9989/Θ2/20-01-2017) information on the Holocaust Remembrance Day and requested that two class periods be dedicated to educational activities and events on the “Children in the Holocaust”, which is the theme of this year video competition for students organized by the Ministry of Education, Research and Religious Affairs and the Jewish Museum of Greece. The video competition is addressed to high school students and includes an educational visit to the Auschwitz Museum.

Minister of Education, Research and Religious Affairs. K. Gavroglu sent a message to the students on the Holocaust Remembrance Day. The message was read in all schools of the country.

On 26.01.2017 at the Ministry of Education, Research and Religious Affairs a Memorandum of Understanding between the Ministry of Education, the Jewish Museum of Greece and Yad Vashem was signed, providing education programs for Teaching about the Holocaust to Greek teachers, who wish to attend. At the same time the Memorandum sets the framework for cooperation concerning a wide range of future educational activities between Greece and Yad Vashem.

A special ceremony was held on the 27^th January 2017 at the 72^nd Elementary School of Athens. Minister of Education, Research and Religious Affairs. K. Gavroglu and the President of the Jewish Community of Athens Mr. M. Moses unveiled dedication plaque in memory of the students of Jewish Primary School of Athens murdered in German concentration camps during WWII. The pupils of the same school attended a special educational course about the Holocaust and implemented several actions, which they presented after the ceremony.

Athens: On January 27th at the Holocaust Monument Jewish and political leaders, the Head of the Greek Delegation to IHRA, foreign Ambassadors laid wreaths. On January 30th the World Jewish Congress Ronald S. Lauder addressed an official Holocaust commemoration ceremony. In recalling the tragedy that nearly destroyed the Jewish community in Greece, asked whether the world has really learnt the lessons of the Holocaust. The ceremony was organized by the Governor of Attica Ms R. Dourou and the Jewish Community of Athens.

Larissa: On 25th January a special educational ceremony for school pupils took place at the Municipal Conservatory of the city. Later on the same day, at the Anne Frank square, representatives of local schools laid wreaths. The next day, on Thursday 26th January, at the Jewish Martyrs square, a memorial service was held and wreaths were laid. Later, at the Synagogue candles were lighted in the memory of the 6 million victims and speeches were delivered by the Governor of Thessaly, the Mayor of Larissa, the President of the Central Jewish Board of Greece and the President of the Jewish Community of Larissa.

Similar ceremonies were held in other cities as well.

Hungary

Pava Street Holocaust Memorial Centre

On 27 January at 1pm, the Government of Hungary held a commemoration ceremony at the Pava Street Holocaust Memorial Centre. Speakers include Dr Laszlo Palkovics, State Secretary of the Ministry of Human Capacities, the Ambassador of the State Of Israel and the Chairman of Mazsihisz. Event invitation.

“The Holocaust is an eternal lesson that it is our duty to fight against prejudice on a daily basis to ensure that the souls and thoughts of future, upcoming generations are never again dominated by delusions and misconceptions”, Minister of State for Education László Palkovics declared at the Holocaust Memorial Center in Budapest on International Holocaust Remembrance Day. Photo: Gergely Botár / kormany.hu

At the commemoration organised to mark International Holocaust Remembrance Day, Mr. Palkovics said: the goal is for young people to “think differently than those who committed these acts”, adding that “the Holocaust not only means concentration camps, but also the fear and ignorance that was the substrate for hatred and anti-Semitism”.

According to the Minister of State, we must continuously work to preserve and maintain our own integrity, humanity, knowledge and memory, and that of our children.

“The Holocaust is also a responsibility, because we must shape our world to ensure that we cannot distance ourselves from an event in the belief that it doesn’t involve us”, he added.

“History and culture are a common issue, as is our future”, declared Mr. Palkovics, who said it was his “particular duty to ensure that children in schools grow up in the spirit of tolerance and acceptance, and learn that we must always raise our voices in protection of human life and fundamental human values”.

“Teaching is the only unified way of ensuring that children become acquainted with the relationship between our country and the Hungarian Jewish community, and also learn from our common past in such a way that the knowledge they acquire goes beyond simple historical data”, he said.

“The Holocaust is part of our national history, which it is our moral obligation to face up to”, the Minister of State said, stressing that “in addition to commemorating the innocent victims it is also our duty to ensure that similar tragedies can never occur again”.

At the ceremony, Israeli Ambassador to Budapest József Amrani spoke about the fact that the Holocaust was not just the tragedy of the Jewish people, but “an age in which civilization failed, in which cultural values dwindles to nothing”, and the six million dead are not simply a number, but the victims of the fist experiment in history aimed at eradicating a whole people from the pace of the earth.

“We cannot allow this to be repeated”, the Ambassador said, stressing that one of the differences between that age and the current situation is that thanks to Israel “we now have a home and a state, and will never again be unprotected”.

President of the Federation of Hungarian Jewish Communities (MAZSIHISZ) András Heisler highlighted the fact that in a few years’ time the eye witnesses of the Holocaust will no longer be with us, and this will mark “the beginning of the future of the history of Auschwitz”, and it will remain our responsibility to ensure that the upcoming generations have some kind of connection to this segment of history.

“We have a past that we can be proud of, and to which we are linked; we must create the foundations for the future of a Hungarian Jewish life in Hungary that is lively and diverse, and which takes stock of the Holocaust”, he noted. “We want to work and develop in a sober and hopeful Hungary that not only tolerates diversity, but celebrates it”, the President of MAZSIHISZ said.

Opening a commemorative exhibition on the gallery of the Synagogue in the Holocaust Memorial Center in Páva Street, Budapest, the Ministry of National Development’s Parliamentary State Secretary, János Főnagy, stressed that we must raise our voices against a “too all intents and purposes timeless part”, so that it will never again be repeated.

“We have no duties or room for movement in the past; that has already been determined. But the future is ours”, he declared, stressing the importance of the Memorial Center, which in addition to historical knowledge provides an emotional and moral interpretation of the past to present and future generations.

March of the Living Foundation in Budapest 

On International Holocaust Remembrance Day at a commemoration was organised by the March of the Living Foundation in Budapest.“The world’s responsible states must face up to the ‘world-shaking’ tragedy of the Holocaust”, Minister of State for EU Affairs Szabolcs Takács from the Prime Minister’s Office declared. Referring to the fact that about a tenth of the victims of the Shoah, some 600 thousand people, were Hungarians, Mr. Takács declared: “It is the firm standpoint of the Hungarian Government that the Hungarian nation died 600 thousand times during the Holocaust, and that in addition to the unforgivable crime of murder every Hungarian who took part in these murders or who collaborated with the murderers also committed treason”. Photo: János Marjai/MTI

As a former chairman of the International Holocaust Remembrance Association (IHRA), the Minister of State explained: “The Holocaust was the precursor for the establishment of both the United Nations and the IHRA, because the birth of both organisations is related to the recognition on the part of world leaders that it is only through stable and institutionalised inter-state cooperation that the Holocaust or another conflict similar to the Second World War can be prevented”.

“Those who drew up the Universal Declaration of Human Rights had the Holocaust in mind when they included in the first line of the document the fact that dignity is the unalienable right of every human being, because they recognised the fact that at the heart of every crime against humanity lies a total disregard for the intrinsic value of every human being. Racist abuse and discriminative language could no longer be regarded in the same way following the Holocaust, because before stripping the victims of their lives, the Holocaust began by stripping them of their dignity”, Mr. Takács said.

The Holocaust may not be the first or last act of genocide in the history of mankind, but it was an unprecedented crime, “the collapse of civilization”, he declared.

The increased frequency of violent acts against Jewish communities and the spread of anti-Semitism throughout Europe “represents a direct threat to democracy, to the fundamental values of civilisation and to the general security of our societies”, the Minister of State stressed, adding that the task facing the international community is clear: major challenges such as anti-Semitism and the violation of human rights must be handled rapidly, with determination and without compromise, or else they will become an insurmountable problem. The Holocaust has shown what happens if we do not face these challenges both individually and internationally, the Minister of State said, stressing that in addition to remembrance “we must also take responsibility for our future”.

Ireland

Holocaust Memorial Day is commemorated in Ireland on the Sunday nearest to 27 January each year. It will take place on 29 January 2017 at the Mansion House, Dublin. The Lord Mayor, Deputy Prime Minister, former President of Ireland, Ministers, Ambassadors, religious leaders and others will attend.

Six candles are lit in memory of  6 million Jews murdered in the Holocaust and candles for all of the other victim groups. Jewish second and third generation survivors light the candles in memory of the Jewish victims and representative organisations light the candles in memory of the other victims (people with disabilities, Roma, Homosexuals etc.)

The commemoration cherishes the memory of those who perished and recalls the millions of innocent Jewish men, women and children and others, who were persecuted during the Nazi Holocaust because of their ethnicity, disability, sexual orientation, political affiliations or their religious beliefs.  As a signatory of Stockholm, Ireland has undertaken to commemorate the Holocaust every year and to teach the lessons from it for the future. The ceremony includes readings, survivors’ recollections, candle-lighting and music.  It will be attended by people from all walks of Irish life and will be attended by around 700 people.

More information

Israel

22 January

10:30 – 13:00 : Israeli Government Cabinet Meeting to mark International Holocaust Remembrance Day, to discuss the state of Holocaust Commemoration around the world, to be attended by Avner Shalev, Chairman of the Directorate, Yad Vashem. The IHRA working definition of antisemitism was proposed for adoption by Education Minister Naftali Bennett, and the decision was accepted unanimously by the Knesset.

24 January

09:00- Onwards: The Knesset, Israel- Governmental sessions marking International Holocaust Remembrance Day will be held in the following Ministerial Committees: the Finance Committee, the Education, Culture and Sport Committee, the Legislature and Law Committee, and the Immigration and Absorption Committees- all attended by representatives of Holocaust organizations and survivors.

09:00-16:00: Symposium- Polish Jewry, History and Memory- "Massuah" Institute for Holocaust Studies, Kibbutz Tel Yitzchak, Israel

14.30: Knesset League of Holocaust Organizations Meeting, attended by Survivors, Representatives and Government Ministers.

16.00: The Knesset Plenary marks International Holocaust Remembrance Day with a special session

25 January

19:00: On the occasion of International Holocaust Remembrance Day Beit Terezin will be opening the exhibit "A Brown Folder – Homage to Felix Bloch" curated by Ruth Lubin at the Municipal gallery of Hadera. More information here

26 January

11:00: The Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs will be screening "I Am My Brother's Keeper" for all staff, to be opened with remarks from IHRA HoD Ran Yaakoby and followed by a lecture from Ms. Irena Steinfeldt, Director of the Righteous Among the Nations Department, Yad Vashem.

16:30-18:00: Yad Vashem will host an event marking the International Day of Commemoration in Memory of the Victims of the Holocaust for members of the diplomatic corps in Israel. International ambassadors and representatives from over 40 countries are scheduled to attend this event, including France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Lithuania, Poland, Spain, the United States and Russia.  In the Yad Vashem Synagogue, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will address the audience followed by Yad Vashem Chairman Avner Shalev. After the formal remarks, guests will be given a guided tour of "Stars Without a Heaven," an exhibition about children in the Holocaust currently on display at Yad Vashem's Exhibitions Pavilion. The event will conclude with a lecture by Dr. Haim Gertner, Director of the Yad Vashem Archives Division and Fred Hillman Chair for Holocaust Documentation, entitled "Visible Voices: Holocaust Testimonies and the Challenges of Meaningful Remembrance."

17:00 The Ghetto Fighter's House present a Symposium for International Holocaust Remembrance Day: "In Our Image- Demonization of the "Other" In Nazi Culture". GHETTO FIGHTERS' HOUSE MUSEUM

Western Galilee M.P 2280300

18:00: "Dorot Hemshech” Next Generations Association conference in cooperation with Yad Vashem on Bystanders- attended by Ms. Irena Steinfeldt, Director of the Righteous Among the Nations Department, Yad Vashem

23-26 January

The Cinematheque Chain will be screening "Not A Family Film" across Israel in seven locations, attended by the Director Chen Steinberg and Director of the Visual Centre of Yad Vashem, Liat Ben Habib, in some instances.

27 January

10.00: International Holocaust Remembrance Day Ceremony for Italian Nationals, International School for Holocaust Studies, Yad Vashem

09.30-11.30: Israeli International Holocaust Remembrance Day Ceremony, "Massuah", Tel Yitzchak, Israel

Featured speakers: Prof. Yitzchak Kashti, Chairman; Mr. Meron Reuben, Chief of State Protocol,  MFA; Israeli Minister of Justice, MK Ayelet Shaked, Prof. Karine Nahon, IDC Herzliya, The Efroni Choir, Conductor Dr. Hesseg

Keynote Address: HE Ambassador David Quarrey, British Ambassador to Israel.

Master of Ceremonies: Kobi Meidan

Online:

As in previous years, a special online event, the IRemember Wall on Yad Vashem's Facebook page, will provide people across the globe with a unique opportunity to engage in online commemorative activity. Each participant will be "linked" to a name of one of the over 4.3 million men, women and children currently found in the Central Database of Shoah Victims' Names, thus creating an opportunity for personal commemoration.

Finally, Yad Vashem staff members will participate in conferences, seminars, exhibitions, ceremonies, lectures, and government meetings around the world to mark January 27th- including the European Parliament, UNESCO HQ in Paris, Austria, the UK, and Germany among others. Yad Vashem Exhibitions, Films, and Educational Materials will be used to mark the day in over 50 countries worldwide.

Italy

13/11/2016 – 04/06/2017

National school competition Shevillim – VIII edition

Increase in the young people the knowledge of the Jewish culture promoting a contact between school and Jewish community. Arrived at the VIII edition, the competion proposes, to the students of all the schools, the creation of a work about a topic of the Jewish culture. The type of work is free and the students can freely create the final product. The awarding will be at the Jewish Museum “Fausto Levi”, Parma.

-Location: Via Camillo Benso Conte di Cavour, 43, 43019 - Parma, Soranga

- Sponsor: Jewish Comunity of Parma and Museum of Soranga

-Support: UCEI, District of Parma, Municipality of Soranga

10/01/2017 – 27/01/2017

Survivors: portraits, memories and voices

Between the 1998 and the 2003, the photographer Simone Gosso met the survivors to the Nazi Camps. This is a selection of 40 photos portraying the places and the faces of them, with their tale-interviews, incorporated in the "Corpus Survivors"; an artistic research, a travel in the memory of things, places and stories of people that became victims of a big collective tragedy.

From a project of “Ocra Lab Idee per comunicare” of Cristina Ballerini.

-Location: Casa della Memoria - Via San Francesco di Sales, 5 - Rome

-Sponsor: ANED (National Association of Ex-Deportees to the Nazi Camps)

-Support: UCEI, Municipality of Rome, Libraries of Rome

11/01/2017 – 12/01/2017

VIII edition “Memories of stumbling”

Installation of 24 Stolpersteine (stumbling blocks) on the sidewalks in front of the houses of the racial and political deportees.

-Location: Rome

-Sponsor: Adachiara Zevi, “Art in Memory” association

18/01/2017 – 19/01/2017

Visit to Auschwitz-Birkenau

Every year The Ministry of Education, University and Research (MIUR) organizes an institutional trip to Poland and to the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp in collaboration with UCEI and Fondazione Museo della Shoah (Foundation for the Museum of the Shoah), which sees the participation, together with the Minister and other members of the Government, of a number of students from secondary schools. These visits create an example for many more schools, associations and groups.

-Location: Cracovia, Auschwitz-Birkenau - Poland

-Sponsor: MIUR, UCEI, Fondazione Museo della Shoah

22/01/2017 – 18/04/2017

Art in Memory

Sunday 22 January 2017, at 11:00 there was the inauguration, in the Synagogue of Ostia Antica, of the VIII edition of "ART IN MEMORY", the biennial international of Contemporary Art created and curated by Adachiara Zevi and organized by the Cultural Association “Arteinmemoria”.

-Location: Ostia Antica Archeological Site - Viale dei Romagnoli 717, 00119 - Rome

-Sponsor: Adachiara Zevi, Association “Arte in memoria”

-Support: Ministry of Cultural Heritage and Activities and Tourism, General Direction of Museums, Ostia Antica Archeological Site , UCEI, Jewish Community of Rome.

22/07/2017

Run for memory

Our why: For the first time in Europe, the Union of the Italian Jewish Communities (UCEI) proposes a collective moment where it will be possible to remember the memory of the Shoah with a run. The sport has the capacity to celebrate our humanity go beyond the difference of religion, belief, culture and gender and the meeting with the other, an important moment to go beyond borders and barriers.

Our idea is to confirm the life; the life goes on anyway and despite the people who tried to murder the Jews and other people, with genocides and massacres.

- Location: Piazza 16 ottobre 1943 – Rome

-Sponsor: UCEI

-Support: Council of Ministries, Municipality of Rome, Lazio, Israel Embassy in Italy

22/01/2017 – 08/03/2017

Mickel Kincha – The second generation

Exhibition of the works of Israeli cartoonist Mickel Kincha

-Location: Jewish museum - Via Valdonica, 1/5, 40126 - Bologna

- Sponsor: MEB Bologna

24/01/2017 – 28/02/2017

TOUCH: Touch some stories of deported Jewish citizens of Ferrara

Albertina Bassani Magrini, Silvio Finzi, Silvio Magrini, Amelia Melli, Zaira Melli, Germana Ravenna, Marcello Ravenna, Lindo Saralvo, Maria Zamorani, Renato Castelfranchi. They are about 10 of the 150 citizens of Ferrrara That, between the end of 1943 and the beginning of 1944, were victims of the Nazis. There is a commemorative plaque in the front of the building where are the Jewish Community and the Synagogues, Via Mazzini.

Now, thanks to this exhibition, people can know better the Identities, faces and stories of women and men, children and old men killed. TOUCH: Touch some stories of deported Jewish citizens of

Ferrara, promoted by the National Museum of Italian Judaism and the Shoah - MEIS and the Institute of Contemporary History of Ferrara, sponsored by the Jewish Community of Ferrara, in the occasion of the Memorial Day 2017 .

Curated the photographers and Piero Cavagna Giulio Malfer, TOUCH it is been inaugurated Tuesday 24 January, at 18:00. The biographies tale, in first person, the lives of the 10 Jews of Ferrara and the pictures, covered with a black thermochromics that reacts to the touch of the people and the pictures, from the oblivion, come back to the life, at least temporarily.

-Location: National Museum of Italian Judaism and the Shoah (MEIS) - Via Piangipane, 81, 44121 - Ferrara

25/01/2017

A Jewish family of Ferrara: the history of Italy tells by the “Calabresi”(1867-1945)

The history of Italy through the pictures and the stories of the Calabresi’s Family, a Jewish family of Ferrara.

- Location: Museo Risorgimento e Resistenza, Corso d’Ercole I d’Estem 19, Ferrara

26/01/2017

Law and legality: the weapons of the democracy, from the memory of the Shoah to an integration of the human rights in the UE

With this conference, we want focus on the power of law: the weapon of defense or destruction of the legal system.

Starting with an excursus of the anti-Semitism law, the actuality and the social values will be examined so that the memory of the Shoah, in the future, will be used not only to remember the past but also to consider the importance of the restoring order after the end of the war.

- Location: Palazzo Mattei di Paganica - Piazza della Enciclopedia Italiana, 4 - Rome

26/01/2017

The ceremony of deposition of a garland to remember the Jews of Ferrara imprisoned in the barracks in January 1944. The duty towards the law and towards the man.

- Location: Caserma Bevilacqua – Corso Ercole I D’este - Ferrara

26/01/2017

The memory of the Shoah and “I giusti fra le nazioni”

Convention in the Department of Law of the University of Ferrara

- Location: University of Ferrara - Corso Ercole I d'Este, 37, 44121 - Ferrara

- Sponsor: University of Ferrara, MEIS, UCEI

26/01/2017

“Serata colorata” – Music of the internment camp of Ferramonti

The concert proposes a Thirties typical repertoire very present in the area of Ferramonti, where composers, friends of Kurt Weil, lived. There is also a wonderful “Ciaccona”of the composer Tomaso Antoio Vitali, composed in 1700: the arrangement had been found between the documents of the people interned.

-Location: Via Pietro de Coubertin, 30, 00196 - Rome

26/01/17

Milan remembers the Shoah. Tribute to Elie Wiesel

The Concert and the story.

- Location: Milan conservatory, via Conservatorio, 12, 20122 - Milan

-Sponsor: CDEC

27/01/2017

Remembrance Day

Every year through the General Direction for Students, Integration and Participation, MIUR organize a national contest and in collaboration with UCEI, now in its 15th year, named “Young people remember the Shoah”, dedicated to students at all levels of school education, in order to promote studies and analyses of the tragic event which marked European history in the 20th century.

Every year, on the occasion of the “Remembrance Day”, the winners of the competition are awarded by the Minister of Education University and Research and are received by the President of Republic together with the highest representatives of the State, and the President of the Jewish Communities of Italy.

-Location: Palazzo del Quirinale, Rome

-Sponsor: MIUR

27/01/2017

“The other resistance: from the forgotten shipwreck to the building of a monument on the Greek coast”

- Location: Museo Risorgimento e Resistenza, Corso d’Ercole I d’Estem 19, Ferrara

27/01/2017

Arte viva: arts to keep alive the memory

Artistic full immersion in the “Remembrance Day”: painting, poetry, story and territory.

The artists give voice and form to their personal idea and conception of the Shoah and the Second World War.

- Location: Palace Liborio Romano - piazza Indipendenza 32, 73053 - Patù, LE

-Sponsor: Don Liborio Romano Association

-Support: Municipality of Patù, ANPI of Lecce

27/01/2017

Seminar for teachers: “Shoah – teach and remember”

The association “Memoriale sardo per la Shoah” and International School for Holocaust Studies - Yad Vashem propose the I Seminar for teachers: “Shoah: teach and remember”

- Location: Liceo Eleonora d'Arborea - Via Carboni Boi - Cagliari

-Sponsor: Association “Memoriale Sardo della Shoah”; Società Letteraria Dante Alighieri; Yad Vashem

-Support: liceo Eleonora d'Arborea Cagliari; Liceo Ginnaio G.M. Dettori Cagliari; Ufficio Scolastico Regionale.

27/01/2017

Pass the baton: pass down the memory

Shoah and Tkumà. Young people of the "Young Kehillah" remember: “What does it mean: share the Memory?” “Ask to the history, ask what we are”.

-Location: International School For Holocaust Studies - Room 212- Yad Vashem - Jerusalem

-Sponsor: Italy Embassy in Tel Aviv, Intalian, Italian Cultural Institute of Tel Aviv, Yad Vashem

-Support: Hevrat Yehude Italia, Young Kehillà, UCEI, UGEI, Dreyfus’s Project

27/01/2017

Witness of Liliana Segre: direct online on the site of the newspaper “Corriere della Sera”

-Location: Milan

-Sponsor: Association “Figli della Shoah”

27/01/2017 – 20/02/2017

Eva Fisher: Art becomes memory

An exhibition with some works of the painter and works of the artistic-cultural renaissance of Italy.

-Location: Cittadella dell'OASI - Troina, Sicily

-Sponsor: Municipality of Troina

-Support: ABEF – Archive of Bauman and Fischer

27/01/2017 – 29/01/2017

From hell to the moon of Jean Pierre Thiercelin. Director: Laura Fatini

In this play, Jean Pierre Thiercelin talks about the transmission of the memory, the importance of the commemoration and the ceremonies in the “Remembrance Day”.

- Location: Teatro Comunale degli Arrischianti di Sarteano - Piazza XXIV giugno, 53047 - Sarteano, SI

28/01/2017

Roundtable “Cremona DP Camp IT82. Arrive and departure. Trajectories, intersections, lives and stories”

The project want to increase the knowledge of the displaced persons Camps, starting from the history of the DP CAMP IT82 of Cremona, a camp (1946-1948) for survivors Jews come from the East Europe.

- Location: Seminario vescovile of Cremona - Cremona

- Sponsor: Library of the Seminario Vescovile of Cremona

28/01/2017-29/01/2017

The worlds of Primo Levi. A strong lucidity

The Nationa Museum of Science and Tecnology proposes special activities in the chemical laboratory and interactive tours to the exhibition.

Location: Museo Nazionale della Scienza e della Tecnologia Leonardo da Vinci - Milan

- Sponsor: The International Primo Levi Studies Center

-Support: Material ConneXion Italia, Lombardy Region, Municipality of Milan, Association “Figli della Shoah” and “Memoriale della Shoah” of Milan.

28/01/2017

“Life of Mario. Story of love and friendship”

Presentation of the book “Vita di Mario. Storia d’amore e d’amicizia”. Author: Andrea Tugnoli

- Location: Museo Risorgimento e Resistenza, Corso d’Ercole I d’Este 19, Ferrara

29/01/2017

The requiem of Terezìn

The lie of the camp of Terezìn.

- Location: Teatro Verdi a Monte San Savino -via Sansovino 66, 52048 - Monte San Vito

-Support: Association Salomon Fiorentino

29/01/2017

The voice of “the swamped”: the witnesses of civil resistance from the polish ghetto

-Location: Centro Sociale Doro – Via le Savonuzzi, 8

29/01/2017

“With their eyes of kids”

Remembrance Concert of the Accademia Corale “V. Veneziani”

- Location: Auditorium Santa Monica – Via R. Roverelli, 7

31/01/2017

The help to Jewish refugees and persecuted: the role of the Italian Finance Police

- Location: Sala Angelli, Biblioteca Aristotea, Via Scienze 17

03/02/2017

Remembrance Day in Formello

A conference with the witness of Anna Coen. There will be Noemi Di Segni, the President of UCEI.

-Location: Via Paolo Borsellino SNC, 00060 - Formello

-Sponsor: Melograno

- Support: Municipality of Formello, IC Barbara Rizzo

18/05/2017 – 18/07/2017

The sport in the Europe of the war

The exhibition will be about the role of the sport in the dictatorships of Europe in the last century. The use of the sport to reaffirm the idea of the “superior race” and, at the same time, the myth of the “new man”.

Location: Casina del valletti - Rome

-Sponsor: Foundation for the Museum of the Shoah

-Support: Council of Ministries, Region of Lazio, Municipality of Rome, UCEI and Jewish Community of Rome.

 

Latvia

Memorial in Bikernieki forest in Riga

On 27 January at 10:00 a commemorative ceremony at the memorial in Bikernieki forest in Riga. This is the biggest mass killing site in Latvia, where some 36,000 people were  killed between 1941-1944, of them some 6-7,000 Latvian Jews, some 13,000 Jews form Germany, Austria and Czech Republic, as well as political prisoners, members of resistance groups and Soviet POWs. The ceremony is organized by the Council of Jewish Communities of Latvia, and will be attended by the leaders of the Jewish community, ambassadors, and representatives of major Christian denominations, and is open to all.

The official Commemoration Day of Genocide against the Jews in Latvia is 4 July (marked since 1990). The main public event commemorates the burning of the Choral Synagogue in Rīga on the 4 July in 1941, and is dedicated to remembrance of all the Jews that were killed in the Holocaust during the Nazi German occupation of Latvia. The commemoration event is always well attended, marked by the presence and participation of the highest government officials including the President of Latvia.

In addition, several commemorative and educational events are organized around 27 of January to mark the International Holocaust Remembrance Day in Latvia:

13-31 January: Yad Vashem exhibition “No Child’s Play”.  Organized by Embassy of Israel.                                                                                                                          

19 January

- Discussion with a researcher from The Elie Wiesel National Institute for the Study of the Holocaust in Romania - Ana Maria Barbulescu.  With the participation of high-school students.  

- The inauguration of the exhibition "Righteous among the Nations".  

Organized by Embassy of Romania/ Council of Jewish Communities of Latvia.                   

20 January: Screening of  documentary “Not the Last Butterfly” – an American documentary about the inspiring tale of The Butterfly Project, a global education and arts program started in the United States whose mission is to paint and display 1.5 million ceramic butterflies to honor and remember each child killed in the Holocaust. To be followed by discussions with the director and producer. Organized by Embassy of United States of America.                                                                                      

23 January: Screening of movie “Gruber’s Journey”. The movie is based on the events that took place during the pogrom in the Romanian city of Iasi on 27-29 June 1941 and depicts the dramatic experience of Curzio Malaparte, an Italian writer and journalist, who is sent to Romania in 1941 as a war correspondent for Italy 's leading newspaper Corriere della Sera.  Organized by Embassy of Romania.                                                                                                    

24 January: The documentary “Carl Lutz – the forgotten hero” about a former Swiss diplomat in Budapest who during WWII saved between 50’000 and 70’000 Jews from the Holocaust in Hungary, using a so-called ‘writ of protection’ scheme to allow Hungarian Jews to emigrate. Organized by Embassy of Switzerland.                                                                                                                       

25 January: The film “El Angel de Budapest” is based on the book “A Spanish against the Holocaust” written by Diego Carcedo. The plot focuses on Angel Sanz Briz, a Spanish ambassador in Hungary during World War II who helped to save the lives of thousands of Jews from the Holocaust. Organized by Embassy of Spain.                                 

26 January

Networking event for History and Social sciences teachers

- Screening of documentary film "Comfort My People", talk with film Director and clinical psychologist Mr. Mishael Chirurg. Beit Eliezer is home to 24 Holocaust survivors where staff is composed by Christian volunteers from Germany and the owner is a family who began caring for Jewish Holocaust survivors for free, more than three generations ago.

- Noa Sigal's lecture , expert form Yad Vashem Institute

- Teachers’ presentations

Organizers - Ministry of Education and Science, Embassy of Israel, Embassy of Germany, Embassy of Canada, EU Representation.

Reading/discussion evening with Lithuanian artist. Organized by Embassy of Lithuania.                                                                                                                                           

27 January

12:00 - Screening of movie "Comfort My People" followed by   Marking International Holocaust Day for diplomatic corps and officials. Organizers - Ministry of Education and Science, Embassy of Israel, Embassy of Germany, Embassy of Canada, EU Representation. 

17:00  - Screening of  the movie “Primo Levi’s Journey” by David Ferrarion with participation of Chris Cooper Primo Levi, one of the 20th century's great writers, was liberated from the Auschwitz concentration camp, and embarked on a thousand-mile journey to his home in Turin, Italy and sixty years later, director Davide Ferrario set out to follow in Levi's footsteps. Organized by Embassy of Italy.                               

31 January

Discussion “The Humans in the inhuman times - the Righteous among the nations in Latvia and Poland”. With the participation of Anna Strozh, the head of the museum named after the Ulm family in Markov  and the representatives of Žanis Lipke Memorial museum.

Organizers - Embassy of Poland and the Museum of Žanis Lipke.

7 February: Exhibition “Jews in Gulag” about the persecution of Czechoslovak Jews in the Gulag during the World War II. Organized by Embassy of Czech Republic.   

Lithuania

Conference “History is Revealed with Things” 

On 27 January the Secretariat of the International Commission for evaluation of the crimes of the Nazi and Soviet regimes in Lithuania organizes a yearly conferenc for teachers and students. This year the conference is being held in Balbieriskis Basic School, Prienai district and is entitled “History is Revealed with Things”. The participants are teachers and students from Tolerance Educational Centers which are established in Lithuanian schools. This is a national conference attended by  participants from different parts of Lithuania, what is more, the conference has been organized since 2011. Every year approximately 200 – 250 participants take part in the conference. The aim of this conference is to present projects and activities on Jews in Lithuania, to tell their personal stories or stories of Jewish communities which were destroyed during the Holocaust in Lithuania. Teams of students and teachers will present short presentations, created movies and performances.

Luxembourg

Commemoration and awareness-raising in schools

For the Ministry of Education, Children and Youth, the “Journée de la Mémoire de l’Holocauste et de la prevention des crimes contre l’humanité” seeks to preserve the memory of the Shoah and attempts to alert youth to the dangers of intolerance, racial or religious hatred, and ignorance. Events are thus designed to increase awareness and fight clichés, stereotypes, and violence against the “Other” and against the unknown.

Events organised by the Ministry of Education, Childhood and Youth are designed to reach both students and teachers, focusing with the former on raising awareness, and on giving the appropriate educational tools to the latter.

On  23^rd, 25^th, 26^th, 27^th and 31^st January 2017, the Ministry and the Centre for Political Education, in collaboration with Luxembourg Film Festival, will screen two movies followed by workshops, moderated by experts in history and the cinematic arts, to allow students to build on their experiences from the movies. Students get to choose between Nebel im August and Das Tagebuch der Anne Frank. The event is being held by the Ministry of Education, Children and Youth, Luxembourg City Film Festival, Zentrum fir politesch Bildung, with the support of the Centre national de l’Audiovisuel, the Cinémathèque de la Ville de Luxembourg, the Cinéma Scala, Cinéma Sura, Ciné Prabbeli and Ciné Maacher; in attendance will be teachers and students of the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg.

Venue:  Centre National de l’Audiovisuel (Dudelange), Cinéma Scala (Diekirch), Cinémathèque de la Ville de Luxembourg (Luxembourg), Ciné Maacher (Grevenmacher), and Cinéma Prabbeli (Wiltz)

More information 

Ceremony and Concert in Esch-sur-Alzette

On 26 January 2017 at 7pm the Musée national de la Résistance, together with the Jewish community of Esch, the Israelite Consistory of Luxembourg, and the NGO MémoShoah organises a public commemoration à the Synagogue Square, the location of the old synagogue of Esch destroyed by the Nazi occupant in 1941.

Esch-sur-Alzette is the second city of the country, and a major centre in the south of Luxembourg. 125 Jews were deported from Esch under the Nazi occupation, with only 3 of them surviving.

The event, attended by several ministers, ambassadors and local authorities, will involve speeches by the mayor of Esch-sur-Alzette and by a Holocaust survivor, to be followed by a mourner’s kaddish. It will also include musical interludes and a symbolic deposit of candles.  The event is organised by Musée national de la Résistance, Communauté israélite Esch, Consistoire israélite Luxembourg, MemoShoah asbl. - Presence of several ministers, ambassadors and local authorities. Open to all.

The commemoration will be followed at 8 p.m. by a concert in the theatre of Esch/Alzette.

Venue: Esch-sur-Alzette (Luxembourg), place de la synagogue

More information

International Conference and Colloquium on the Future of Remembrance

The Musée National de la Résistance, MémoShoah, the Kultufabrik, and the Témoins de la 2^e génération organise a two-day colloquium in Esch-sur-Alzette on the topic of commemoration and remembrance work on January 20^th and 21^st. This will be preceded on the 19^th by a conference on the growth of radical populism in Europe.

The conference will include presentations by various experts, and involve four panels to discuss the topics of Holocaust Remembrance, Remembrance and Youth, Culture of Remembrance and Political Education, and Culture and Memory. Simultaneous translation for French and German will be provided. 

Venue: Centre culturel Kulturfabrik, Esch-sur-Alzette

More information 

Conferences by prof. Gideon Greif

MémoShoah organises three conferences in different parts of the country on 22, 23 and 25 January, to be held by the Israeli historian and holocaust expert prof. Gideon Greif, of Yad Vashem.

Prof. Greif will speak on three different occasions, the first time after a showing of the movie “Son of Saul” at the Cinémaacher (Grevenmacher), then at the former synagogues of Ettelbruck and Mondorf-les-Bains.  

Venue: Cinémaacher (Grevenmacher), Ettelbruck Synagogue, Mondorf Synagogue, Lycée Classique Diekirch

More information 

Netherlands

In the Netherlands the victims of the Holocaust are commemorated in the week of 27th January. In this week different institutions organise commemorative activities, as well as educational activities on the Holocaust and other genocides. The week concludes with the National Holocaust Commemoration on Sunday the 29 January 2017.

Holocaust Memorial Day period

The activities during the period leading up to Holocaust Memorial Day are organised by schools, universities and local government, and are coordinated by the NIOD, Institute for War, Holocaust and Genocide Studies. The activities differ in size, topic and target group, but are mainly aimed at young people (15-25 years) and their educators. The theme for the activities in 2017 is ‘Crossing the border’. With the theme the NIOD wants to stimulate people to think about where they themselves draw the line when it comes to violence and persecution.

Within the context of the Holocaust Memorial Day period the Dutch Auschwitz Committee also organises the ‘Auschwitz Never Again Lecture’. In 2017 this lecture will be delivered by professor Timothy Snyder, author of amongst others ‘Bloodlands’ and ‘Black Earth’.

Commemoration Day

The National Holocaust Commemoration takes place in the Wertheimpark in Amsterdam. A Silent March departs from the Amsterdam Town Hall to the Wertheimpark at 10:55 AM. The actual commemoration takes place  at the ‘Auschwitz Never Again’- memorial and starts at 11.30 AM. The ceremony is attended by Holocaust survivors and their families and friends, the speakers of the Senate and the House of Representatives, ministers, ambassadors of many countries affected by the Holocaust and the Mayor of Amsterdam. The program consists of music, speeches, Kaddish and Jizkor prayers and a moment of silence; the ceremony is concluded with the laying flowers on the monument. The Dutch National Television (NOS) will make a live registration of the commemoration. The commemoration is organised by the Dutch Auschwitz Committee.

Norway

The memorial to deported Norwegian Jews

27 January: 15:00-15:30

The National ceremony for Holocaust Remembrance Day is marked with a traditional ceremony at the site of the memorial to deported Norwegian Jews. The ceremony consists of speeches, cultural performances and the lighting of candles, and is attended by representatives of the Norwegian Government, various groups who were victims of the Holocaust, and Jewish schoolchildren. In 2017 Minister of Finance Siv Jensen is the main speaker. There will be short speeches from representatives of the Jewish Community in Oslo, Roma people and LHH (National Association for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender persons). The ceremony is open to everyone and will be concluded with a gathering at Akershus Fortress. The event is organised by the Center for Studies of Holocaust and Religious Minorities.

15:45-16:45: At the Fortress there will be serving of soup and a short lecture by Mr. Bjarte Bruland, Director at The Jewish Museum in Trondheim.

Venue: The memorial to deported Norwegian Jews, Akershuskaia, Oslo

Online lessons and survivor testimony

27 January: 13.00-15.00

The Education Department at the Holocaust Centre organizes a lesson for all Norwegian school classes available online. The pupils get to know the stories of Siegmund Korn and Karl Peter Federer, one of whom fled Norway and survived, the other was killed in Auschwitz-Birkenau.  In the weeks prior to the Holocaust Remembrance Day, pupils around the country are invited to submit questions to be discussed on January 27. Survivor Siegmund Korn will be present on the Holocaust Remembrance Day to answer selected questions and talk about his story with two or three participating school classes. Furthermore, the conversation will be live streamed.

The Education Department at the Holocaust Center has also developed teaching material especially for the Holocaust Remembrance Day.

Venue: Artilleriloftet, Akershus Fortress

Falstad Centre

27 January: 12:00-19:30

The 27th of January 2017 marks 72 years since the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau by Soviet troops. During the Second World War SS Camp Falstad 1941-1945 acted as the main transit camp to Auschwitz for Jews living in Mid-Norway, and The Falstad Centre has -- since its establishment as a Human Rights Centre in 2006 - honoured the memory of Holocaust victims by marked the 27th of January through educational human rights programming for both local and international participants.

In 2017 The Falstad Centre will cooperate with Sund Folk High School and The Norwegian University of Science and Technology in commemorating the event mirrored through the relevant themes of flight, migration and refuge. The students will participate in various workshops based on the themes and the history surrounding that of the camp. The students will be able to share their reflections with their peers on topics ranging from the Norwegian Holocaust, Nazi ideology, migration theory, human rights education and prisoner history. After the workshop there will be a torchlight procession headed to the memorial site at the Falstad Forest. The day will be concluded with a student organized concert, photography exhibit and screening of the movie “Fire at Sea” by Gianfranco Rossi.

Venue: Falstad, Nord-Trøndelag

North Sea Traffic Museum

23 , 24, 25, 26, 27, 30 January

A closed ceremony, including the lighting of candles, for invited school children in 7^th grade. The play “Sarah with a J” - about the arrests of the Norwegian Jews, will be played for the schoolchildren in the museum.

Venue: Telavåg, Hordaland

Jewish Museum Trondheim

27. January: 18:00-21:00

Open event at the Trondheim Public Library. Participants include Abid Raja, Member of Parliament (Venstre), John Peder Egenæs, Secretary General, Amnesty International Norway and Dag Einar Thorsen, Associate Professor, University College of Southeast Norway.

Venue: Trondheim Public Library (Folke-biblioteket), Rådhussalen, Peter Egges plass 1, Trondheim

Arendal, Vest-Agder

24. January: 09:30-13-30

Event for 9^th graders in Arendal city and region. Students will through  film, lectures, theater and teaching be challenged on topics such as World War II, genocide, Holocaust, and their own values. Location: Arendal kulturhus og kino.

Kristiansand, Vest-Agder

25. January: 8:00-8.45

Event for students at Kristiansand Cathedral School based on the persecution of Jews in Agder county during World War II, and contemporary challenges as anti-Semitism and racism today.  Location: Kristiansand Cathedral School.

Kristiansand, Vest-Agder

26. and 27. January: 09:30-12.45

Events for 9^th graders in Kristiansand city and region. Students will through  film, lectures, theater and teaching be challenged on topics such as World War II, genocide, Holocaust, and their own values. Location: phoenix theater and Aladdin cinema in Kristiansand. Time: 09.30-12-45 both days.

Narviksenteret and Red Cross War Museum

27. January: 17:30-

Open lecture, conversation and visits to the city's Stolpersteins. Narvik center's auditorium at. 17.30

27. January: 11.30-

The 7th graders at the municipal schools are invited to Beisfjord prison camp, for conversation and walking in the camp. The event is also open to other interested parties. 

Narviksenteret

27. January: 11.45-

The 9th graders at the municipal schools are invited to lecture, conversation and visits to to the city's Stolpersteins.

Poland

The Centre for Education Development annually reminds teachers of the upcoming Holocaust Remembrance Day by placing a note on its Internet websites (www.ore.edu.pl and www.polska-izrael.edu.pl) about the history of the establishment of this commemoration and about the ceremonies taking place at the Auschwitz-Birkenau Museum. ORE encourages schools to take action to commemorate the Holocaust on 27 January as well as carry out long-term activities aimed at combating racism, antisemitism and intolerance.

Secondary schools in Poland have been able to participate in numerous programmes run by the Centre for Education Development for over ten years now. One of them is the “Memory for the Future” project, run since 2003 in cooperation with the Children of the Holocaust Association. It offers support to schools and preparation for the organisation of educational undertakings related to the Day of Holocaust Remembrance and Prevention of Crimes Against Humanity, which is celebrated in Poland on 19 April, the day the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising broke out in 1943. The project consists of two parts: i) training for secondary education (middle school) and further education (high school) teachers; ii) as well as preparation for as well and implementation of educational projects dealing with the Holocaust Remembrance Day. A series of educational classes and the involvement of schools in Holocaust Remembrance Day ceremonies are the best way to arouse young people’s interest in the difficult past: such actions disclose to students the tragedies and difficult choices of those times and a broader context of those events, reveal the positive and negative sides of human behaviour in extreme situations, and shape social conduct, sensitivity and empathy.

The current 2017 edition of the “Memory for the Future” competition bears the title of “Let this treasure fall into good hands – the fate of the Ringelblum Archive on the 70^th anniversary of the Emanuel Ringelblum Jewish Historical Institute”. The aim of the competition is to familiarise teachers and students with the history of the Ringelblum Archive, the conditions in which it came into existence and the people who created it. The participation in the competition project will let students not only find out how the archivists managed to hide their collections during the liquidation of the ghetto and in what circumstances they were discovered after the war, but also learn about the great significance of this unique collections of documents, placed on the UNESCO Memory of the World International Register.

Romania

Education

• Bucharest, 27 January, the IHRA Chair will visit a highscool in the Romanian capital to discuss about the Holocaust with the students
• Craiova (South Romania), Tudor Arghezi highscool, on the 27^th of January – essay contest about the Holocaust.
• Arad (Western Romania), The Centre for Jewish Studies `Nicolae Cajal`, the Arad County Council, the Jewish Community and others, 27 January 2017 – competition for undergraduate students in Arad (essay, art, etc.). Video here.

Commemoration ceremonies

• Bucharest, 27 January 2017, organized by the Federation of the Jewish Communities in Romania in partnership with the National Institute for the Study of the Holocaust in Romania „Elie Wiesel” , the Centre for the Research of the History of the Jews in Romania, The Jewish Theatre in Bucharest.
• Zalau (West Romania ), 30 January 2017, organized by the Jewish Community in the central park

Music

• Concert in the memory of the victims of the Holocaust, 25 January, Bistrita Nasaud. The event is organized by the Jewish community in Bistrita Nasaud together with other organisations and with the support of local authorities. Media link here.
• Concert in the memory of the victims of the Holocaust, 27 January, Craiova. The event is organized by Oltenia Philarmonic.

Films

• Holocaust Film Festival in memoriam Elie Wiesel, Bucharest, 27-29 January.

The Festival is organized by the National Institute for the Study of the Holocaust in Romania „Elie Wiesel” in partnership with the French Institute and the Embassy of the State of Israel in Romania.

Participating films: Dire l’indicible: La quete de Elie Wiesel (1997) ; The Courageous Heart of Irena Sendler (2009) ; In Darkness (2011); Souvenirs de Iasi (2016); The Grey Zone (2001); Le dernier des injustes (2013) ; Struma (2001).

• Screening of the film Charging the Rhino, Bucharest, 30 January, the Great Synagogue.
• Screening of the film Souvenirs de Iasi, Iasi, 30 January. Event organized by Institut Francais, Iasi.

Round tables/Public Debates

• Bucharest, The Great Synagogue, 27 January 2017
• Suceava (North Romania), Central Public Library from the city, on the 27^th of January, with the support of local authorities. 
• Curtea de Arges, the Town’s Museum will host a roundtable on lessons learnt from the Holocaust, on the 26^th of January.
• Iasi, 28 January, the Association of the Journalism Students organize a public debate on the Iasi Pogrom with the Romanian novelist Catalin Mihuleac, the author of the novel The last cigarette that belonged to Benjamin Fondane.

Exhibitions

• Bucharest, opening of the exhibition `The Future of Memory`, 20 January, Bucharest. The exhibition will be accessible for the public for one week and is situated in the Cesianu-Filipescu House, a branch of the Bucharest Museum, situated in the city centre. Link to the exhibition here (in English).

Slovakia

In Slovakia there is an established a national Holocaust memorial day, which is commemorated on 9 September as “the Memorial Day for Victims of the Holocaust and of Racial Violence”. On 9 September 1941, the Slovak State of that time passed repressive laws, the so-called Jewish Codex, with which the process of Jewish deportations was initialized and which resulted in the killing of over 70, 000 Slovak Jews. Commemorative ceremonies are held on the highest level.

Nevertheless, the 27 January is also remembered in Slovakia with several events:

Sereď Holocaust Museum (opened in January 2016, created on the site of the former labour and concentration camp in town Sereď) has prepared the following three events for January 2017:

20 January 2017: Introducing a video application for deaf and hearing impaired people – this is the first museum in Slovakia, that offers guided tour in sign language.

27 January 2017: On International Holocaust Remembrance Day students will be invited to a discussion with survivor Otto Šimko.

31 January 2017: The presentation of the publication "On the thin ice“ written by Jan Hanak, a Holocaust survivor who later become a doctor-paratrooper in Czechoslovak army, surgeon and active sportsman.

Apart from the Holocaust Museum in Sereď, many other different kind of ceremonies, programs and discussions are taking place all over Slovakia in communities, schools, non-governmental organizations, libraries, cinemas.

20 January 2017: Slovak NGO „Človek v ohrození“ and Czech DROM Roma Centre presented  their project “My a naša história” (“We and our history”) dedicated to the history of Roma Holocaust and Roma during Communism using the methods of the oral history.

29 January 2017: Presentation of the new publication of the Institute of History of the Slovak Academy of Sciences titled “Odhaľovanie Šoa: Odpor a úsilie Židov informovať svet o genocide” (Uncovering the Shoah: Resistance of Jews and Their Efforts to Inform the World on Genocide, eds: Ján Hlavinka, Hana Kubátová) will be held under the auspices of the President of the Slovak Republic Andrej Kiska in Slovak National Gallery. Presentation will be followed by discussion with participants Ivan Kamenec, Ján Hlavinka and Fedor Blaščák.

Slovenia

KAMNIK

18 January 2017

18.00

Rudolf Maister's Birth House, Šutna 23

Jewish soldiers at the Isonzo Front, lecture by Dr Renato Podbersič, Jr.

Organiser: Intermunicipal Museum of Kamnik

https://www.facebook.com/events/1388392311178990/

MARIBOR

24 January 2017

18.00

Salon of Applied Arts, Glavni trg 1

Boarding House, presentation of the novel, with the participation of its author, Piotr Paziński, moderated by Tina Podržaj

Organiser: Pivec Publishing House in cooperation with the Salon of Applied Arts, Maribor

http://www.zalozba-pivec.com/zalozba/novica/1122/

Piotr Paziński is a Polish novelist, essayist, literary critic and translator, and editor-in-chief of the Midrasz newspaper published by the Polish Jewish Community. In 2012, he won the EU Prize for Literature for his début novel Boarding House (Pensjonat, 2009) about the Polish Jewish community after World War II. The novel has recently been published in a Slovene translation by Klemen Pisk (Pivec Publishing House). Mr Paziński's visit is part of the Pulse of European Literature project funded by the European Commission in the framework of the Creative Europe programme.

25 January 2017

18.00

Salon of Applied Arts, Glavni trg 1

Dachau – Mauthausen – Rižarna – Jasenovac – Auschwitz, presentation of virtual guides with their designer, Mihael Toš

Organisers: Centre of Jewish Cultural Heritage Synagogue Maribor and Maribor Library in cooperation with the Salon of Applied Arts, Maribor

http://www.sinagogamaribor.si/; https://www.facebook.com/SinagogaMaribor

With a combination of geo-mapped photos and spatial overview of the sites, these virtual guides enable detailed viewing of the monuments commemorating the Nazi, fascist and Ustashe persecution.

26 January 2017

18.00

Centre of Jewish Cultural Heritage Synagogue Maribor, Židovska ulica 4

Stolen Childhood, a remembrance performance accompanied by a cultural programme delivered by II. Gimnazija Maribor grammar school students

Organisers: Centre of Jewish Cultural Heritage Synagogue Maribor and II. Gimnazija Maribor grammar school

http://www.sinagogamaribor.si/; https://www.facebook.com/SinagogaMaribor

27 January 2017

9.30

Maribor University Library, Glazer's Hall, Gospejna ulica 10

Each Year One Name: Ivan Breskvar, international science meeting

Organiser: Centre of Jewish Cultural Heritage Synagogue Maribor in cooperation with Maribor University Library

http://www.sinagogamaribor.si/; https://www.facebook.com/SinagogaMaribor

The purpose of the scientific meeting One Name Each Year, which is traditionally held in January, is to present the latest research results on the history of the Holocaust and anti-Semitism. This year's meeting, dedicated to the Slovenian Righteous Among the Nations, will be attended by renowned researchers of the Holocaust and anti-Semitism from Slovenia, Austria and Croatia: Dejan Süč, Franc Kuzmič, Boris Hajdinjak, Dr Gerald Lamprech, Dr Ljiljana Dobrovšak, Dr Renato Podbersič and Dr Anna Maria Grünfelde, and as a guest, Blanka Jamnišek from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Republic of Slovenia. On this occasion, the fifth volume of the publication Slovenian Jews: History and the Holocaust will be presented.

LJUBLJANA

25 January 2017

17.30

Mini Teater – Ljubljana Jewish Cultural Centre, Križevniška ulica 1

Boarding House, presentation of the novel, with the participation of its author, Piotr Paziński, moderated by Tina Podržaj

Organisers: Ljubljana Jewish Cultural Centre, Mini Teater and Pivec Publishing House, Maribor

https://www.facebook.com/LjubljanaJewishCulturalCentre/posts/601364633395684

The Ljubljana Jewish Cultural Centre will be hosting the Polish writer Piotr Paziński, who will present his novel Boarding House. The novel, which won the EU Prize for Literature in 2012, has recently been published by the Pivec Publishing House in a Slovenian translation by Klemen Pisk. Piotr Paziński is editor-in-chief of the Polish Jewish community magazine Midrasz. Boarding House is about the Polish Jewish community after World War II.

Piotr Paziński, born in Warsaw in 1973, studied philosophy and is a Polish novelist, essayist, literary critic and translator. Between 1992 and 1997, he worked as a journalist for Gazeta Wyborcza's foreign news department. In 2005, he obtained a PhD in literature with a thesis on Joyce's Ulysses. Since 2000, he has been editor-in-chief of the Polish Jewish community magazine Midrasz. He has written two novels on Jewish topics: his first, Pensjonat (Boarding House, 2009), which has also been translated into Slovene, won him the EU Prize for Literature in 2012, and his second novel, Ptasie ulice (Bird Streets, 2013), has been very favourably reviewed. Paziński has published two monographs on James Joyce: Labirynt i drzewo (Labyrinth and Tree, 2005) and Dublin z Ulissesem (Dublin with Ulysses, 2008). His latest book, Rzeczywistość poprzecierana (Average Reality, 2015), is a collection of essays on Joyce, Borges, Kafka, Celan, Schulz and other Polish writers.

Boarding House is a story of Polish Jews – of those still living in Poland as well as of those who used to live there, and now live on in the memory of new generations. It opens with a young man from Warsaw visiting a boarding house where he often spent time with his grandmother as a small boy. Now he encounters several aged guests – Jews who survived the Holocaust and who remember him as a child. In the boarding house, the past meets the present, everything occurs like a dream, as if the ghosts of people long dead were resurrected, bringing with them all their quarrels, conversations and experiences. For the elderly, the past seems very close, almost within reach, but their recollections are also distorted by their obsessions or gaps in memory. When the hero of the book realises that these people are the last living witnesses to the pre-war world of Polish Jews, he feels compelled to stand by their side in the autumn of their lives. The novel, full of human warmth and gentle irony, shows us how Jewish tradition still exists in Poland in all its diversity.

26 January 2017

18.00

Mini Teater – Ljubljana Jewish Cultural Centre, Križevniška ulica 1

Commemoration on the occasion of International Holocaust Remembrance Day, reading of the names of Slovene victims of the Holocaust, accompanied by Maurice Ravel's Kaddish performed by Anja Bukovec and Nuška Drašček

Organisers: Ljubljana Jewish Cultural Centre and Mini Teater, Ljubljana

https://www.facebook.com/LjubljanaJewishCulturalCentre/posts/601364633395684

Anja Bukovec is an internationally renowned Slovenian violinist, and numerous highly acclaimed performances in Slovenia and abroad have made her a true ambassador of music. Her style and musical expression transcend traditional borders and bring together even the most diverse listeners.

Nuška Drašček is a Slovene singer, winner of national and international awards, former member of the world-renowned choir Perpetuum Jazzile, performer at numerous festivals and on TV shows, liked equally by lovers of musicals, choral music, jazz and pop. Nuška Drašček is also an accomplished opera singer, and has sung with the opera star Ana Netrebko, among others.

Joseph-Maurice Ravel, French composer, 7 March 1875, Ciboure – 28 December 1937, Paris. Kaddish, also known as the "Mourner's Prayer", is recited in honour of the dead.

The names of 587 Slovene victims of the Holocaust will be read by Robert Waltl.

18.40

Ljubljana Jewish Cultural Centre, Križevniška ulica 3

Joško Prinčič: Stones of Memory – Jewish Cemetery in Rožna Dolina, photo exhibition opening

Organisers: Ljubljana Jewish Cultural Centre and Mini Teater, Ljubljana

https://www.facebook.com/LjubljanaJewishCulturalCentre/posts/601364633395684

The Jewish cemetery in Rožna Dolina near Nova Gorica is a unique monument of Jewish cultural heritage in Slovenia. It is also the largest Jewish cemetery in the country, and one of the best preserved Jewish burial grounds in Central Europe. Together with the synagogue in Gorizia, which dates from the mid-18th century, it is the only remnant of immovable cultural heritage that used to be part of the unified Jewish community in Gorizia, which is today divided between two EU member states. Through the eyes of the art photographer Joško Prinčič, we take a tour of the cemetery and thus send an appeal to the Slovene authorities to ensure the protection of the Jewish mortuary and of this entire unique monument of Jewish cultural heritage in Slovenia.

27 January 2017

11.30

Ljubljana, Old City Centre, Židovska steza 4

Unveiling of a memorial plaque at the site of the former synagogue – the plaque will be unveiled by Zoran Janković, Mayor of Ljubljana, and Robert Waltl, Director of the Ljubljana Jewish Cultural Centre

Organisers: Municipality of Ljubljana and Ljubljana Jewish Cultural Centre

https://www.facebook.com/LjubljanaJewishCulturalCentre/posts/601364633395684

The Municipality of Ljubljana and the Ljubljana Jewish Cultural Centre have erected a memorial plaque in memory of the former Jewish community in Ljubljana. The plaque is located in Židovska steza 4, at the site of the former synagogue in Ljubljana. The plaque will be unveiled by Zoran Janković, Mayor of Ljubljana, and Robert Waltl, Director of the Ljubljana Jewish Cultural Centre, and the keynote speaker will be Dr Andrej Pančur. This is the first public memorial testifying to the presence of a Jewish community in Slovenia's capital.

20.00

Mini Teater – Ljubljana Jewish Cultural Centre, Križevniška ulica 1

Asher Kravitz: The Jewish Dog, opening night of the show, directed by Yonatan Esterkin and performed by Miha Rodman

Organisers: Mini Teater and Ljubljana Jewish Cultural Centre in cooperation with Prešeren Theatre Kranj

http://www.mini-teater.si/si/articles/3402/judovski-pes

The Jewish Dog is the autobiography of Cyrus, a dog born in the mid-1930s into the household of the German-Jewish Gottlieb family. Cyrus is a special dog, unusually sensitive to human emotions and determined to fully understand human speech. The novel follows his life and thoughts while he makes his way through Europe during World War II. Cyrus witnesses the rise of Nazism and the Holocaust, while the only love he knows he experienced in the Gottlieb family. A Nazi decree forces the family out of their home, and unfortunate events separate them from Cyrus. Leaving behind his life with a loving Jewish family, he is forced to survive as a stray dog, spends some time with a wild pack and eventually becomes an SS Nazi guard dog at the Treblinka concentration camp. He undergoes several name changes and is left to himself in increasingly dangerous situations, while the only thing that keeps him alive is his strong survival instinct coupled with his yearning to be reunited with the Gottlieb family. With skilful fluidity of language, Kravitz employs ingeniously harrowing metaphors and imagery to describe historic events of World War II as seen by an unusually sensitive and insightful Jewish dog. The result is a powerful and heart-rending narrative, and Cyrus is a poignant and unforgettable character.

Direction and concept: Yonatan Esterkin; translation: Katja Šmid; performer: Miha Rodman; dramaturgy: Anja Krušnik Cirnski; language editing: Mateja Dermelj. Opening night: 27 January 2017; co-production: Mini Teater, Prešeren Theatre Kranj and Ljubljana Jewish Cultural Centre

28 January 2017

20.00

Mini Teater – Ljubljana Jewish Cultural Centre, Križevniška ulica 1

Asher Kravitz: The Jewish Dog, second performance of the show directed by Yonatan Esterkin and performed by Miha Rodman

Organisers: Mini Teater and Ljubljana Jewish Cultural Centre in cooperation with Prešeren Theatre Kranj

http://www.mini-teater.si/si/articles/3402/judovski-pes

29 January 2017

11.00

Kino Šiška Centre for Urban Culture, Trg prekomorskih brigad 3

Holocaust Remembrance Day, commemoration organised by the Slovenian Association of World War II Veterans – Coordination of Camp Committees

Organiser: Slovenian Association of World War II Veterans – Coordination of Camp Committees

8 February 2017

20.00

Mini Teater – Ljubljana Jewish Cultural Centre, Križevniška ulica 1

Asher Kravitz: The Jewish Dog, theatre show directed by Yonatan Esterkin, performed in English by Miha Rodman

Organisers: Mini Teater and Ljubljana Jewish Cultural Centre in cooperation with Prešeren Theatre Kranj

http://www.mini-teater.si/si/articles/3402/judovski-pes

MURSKA SOBOT

24 January 2017

19.00

Murska Sobota Regional and Study Library, Zvezna ulica 10

Vladek's Path into the Unknown: Chronicle of a Jewish Family from Murska Sobota, presentation of the book, with the participation of its author, Dr Bojan Zadravec

Organiser: Murska Sobota Regional and Study Library

26 January 2017

17.00

Murska Sobota Regional and Study Library, Zvezna ulica 10

The Slovenian Righteous Among the Nations, presentation of the book, with the participation of its authors, Boris Hajdinjak, Dr Irena Šumi and Dr Oto Luthar

Organisers: Scientific Research Centre of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts and Murska Sobota Regional and Study Library

DOLGA VAS PRI LENDAVI

26 January 2017

16.00

Jewish cemetery in Dolga Vas

Commemoration of the Lendava Jews and lighting of candles

Organisers: Lendava Association of Cultural Societies and Lendava Cultural Society

27 January 2017

11.30

Jewish cemetery in Dolga Vas

Laying of a wreath on Holocaust Remembrance Day

Organisers: Municipality of Lendava/Lendva and Lendava Gallery-Museum

LENDAVA

26 January 2017

16.30

Memorial park in honour of World War II victims next to the Bilingual Elementary School Lendava I

Tour of the memorial plaques with professional guide

Organisers: Lendava Association of Cultural Societies and Lendava Cultural Society

17.00

Lendava Association of Cultural Societies, Glavna ulica 2

Remembering Lendava Jews, lecture by Dejan Süč

Organisers: Lendava Association of Cultural Societies and Lendava Cultural Society

27 January 2017

17.00

Synagogue Lendava – Slovenian Holocaust Museum, Spodnja ulica 5

The Life of Boris Braun, film screening, (Croatia, 2015)

Organiser: Lendava Gallery-Museum

POTRNA/LAAFELD (Austria)

27 January 2017

18.30

Pavel's House (Pavelhaus), Laafeld/Potrna 30, Radkersburg-Umgebung

Schwarze Milch. Zurückgehaltene Briefe aus den Todeslagern Transnistriens, presentation of the book

Organiser: Cultural Society Article 7 for Austrian Styria – Pavel's House, Potrna/Laafeld

The book Schwarze Milch. Zurückgehaltene Briefe aus den Todeslagern Transnistriens (2013, Black Milk. Undelivered Letters from the Death Camps of Transnistria) is a collection of letters written by Jews detained by Romanian Police at Czernowitz railway station, which the addressees – relatives of the deported Jews – never received. The letters were discovered only a few years ago; they were collected and edited by Benjamin Grilj.

PTUJ

27 January 2017

19.00

Hotel Mitra, Prešernova ulica 6

Dachau – Mauthausen – Rižarna – Jasenovac – Auschwitz, presentation of virtual guides with their designer, Mihael Toš

Organiser: Hotel Mitra

PROGRAMME FOR CHILDREN AND YOUTH

LJUBLJANA

10 January 2017

9.00 and 11.00

Cankarjev Dom Cultural and Congress Centre, Linhart Hall, Prešernova cesta 10

Hans Krása: Brundibár, children's opera; following the viewing, a children's workshop entitled The unusual beginning of a great music career* may be organised

Organisers: Music Society Glasbena Matica Ljubljana, Cankarjev Dom Cultural and Congress Centre, Slovene Chamber Music Theatre and the Academy of Music in Ljubljana

http://www.glasbenamatica.si/otroci/brundibar

Brundibár by Hans Krása is the only world-renowned opera written for child performers. It was originally performed in Prague in 1942, and has gone down in history due to the role it played in the Terezín camp during World War II. It helped make the tragic fate of the internees more humane and bearable – for both the performers and for the audience, who viewed it more than fifty times. Children understood the opera as a fairy tale with a moral lesson in which good conquers evil. The opera ends with a song sung by children to celebrate the victory over the evil Brundibár, who, during the war, was synonymous with Hitler. The purpose of this contemporary staging is to make young generations aware of the tragedy of the Holocaust through music and art. Before and after viewing the opera, students will be able to attend a workshop at which, together with professionals from the National Museum of Contemporary History, they will discuss historical issues of the Holocaust, concentration camps and the fate of Jews in World War II, as well as current issues of violence, hate speech, (in)tolerance, sympathy, respect for different cultures and the importance of keeping alive the memory of tragic events of the war.

Participants: students of the Academy of Music in Ljubljana and Children's Choir of Glasbena Matica Ljubljana; artistic leadership: Irma Močnik, Pia Brodnik, Simon Dvoršak and Nana Milčinski; production: Music Society Glasbena Matica Ljubljana, Cankarjev Dom Cultural and Congress Centre, Slovene Chamber Music Theatre and the Academy of Music in Ljubljana

*Admission charge

11 January 2017

11.00

Cankarjev Dom Cultural and Congress Centre, Linhart Hall, Prešernova cesta 10

Hans Krása: Brundibár, children's opera*

http://www.glasbenamatica.si/otroci/brundibar

Organisers: Music Society Glasbena Matica Ljubljana, Cankarjev Dom Cultural and Congress Centre, Slovene Chamber Music Theatre and the Academy of Music in Ljubljana

*Admission charge

24 January 2017

9.00 and 11.00

National Museum of Contemporary History, Celovška cesta 23

Children in concentration camps, workshop for elementary- and secondary school students

Organiser: National Museum of Contemporary History

http://www.muzej-nz.si/sl/pages.php?id_meni=286&id=204

When notable people from the cultural, musical and theatre spheres were deported by the Nazis to the Terezín camp, they spontaneously engaged in rich cultural activities and, among other things, repeatedly staged the Brundibár children's opera. Children understood the opera as a fairy tale with a moral lesson in which good conquers evil. The opera ends with a song sung by children to celebrate the victory over the evil Brundibár, who, during the war, was synonymous with Hitler. The audience enjoyed the allegorical protest of the opera. At the workshop, with the help of professionals from the National Museum of Contemporary History, students will discuss the historical issues of the Holocaust, concentration camps and the fate of Jews in World War II, as well as current issues of violence, hate speech, (in)tolerance, sympathy, respect for different cultures and the importance of keeping alive the memory of tragic events of the war.

25 January 2017

During regular classes:

Koseze Elementary School, Ledarska ulica 23

Holocaust Remembrance, exhibition of art work produced by Koseze Elementary School students (the exhibition will be open until 17 February 2017)

Organiser: Koseze Elementary School

In 2016, students of the Koseze Elementary School visited the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum and the Schindler Museum in Krakow. They depicted their feelings experienced during the visit to the deadly camp and the Schindler museum in works of art, which will be on display on the school premises. They will also present one of the stories of the Holocaust, view a Holocaust-related film during their classes and participate in some additional school activities. One group of students will visit the National Museum of Contemporary History where they will hear the testimony of a concentration camp survivor, while another group will participate in the workshop entitled 'Children in concentration camps'.

11.00

National Museum of Contemporary History, Celovška cesta 23

Testimony of a concentration camp survivor, a talk with a guest – concentration camp survivor

Organiser: National Museum of Contemporary History

http://www.muzej-nz.si/sl/pages.php?id_meni=286&id=204

Museum guests – concentration camp survivors – will share with visitors their experiences. The programme is intended for elementary- and secondary school students.

12.30

National Museum of Contemporary History, Celovška cesta 23

Concentration camp systems during World War II; a lesson with the testimony of a concentration camp survivor

Organiser: National Museum of Contemporary History

http://www.muzej-nz.si/sl/pages.php?id_meni=286&id=204

The lesson is intended for elementary- and secondary school students, and will provide an overview of the systems and types of concentration camps. It will also offer a possibility to discuss the return policies after World War II and repatriation bases for various groups of people. It will end with a video testimony of a concentration camp survivor, Ms Erika Fürst, who was interned in Auschwitz.

26 January 2017

11.00

National Museum of Contemporary History, Celovška cesta 23

Testimony of a concentration camp survivor, a talk with a guest – concentration camp survivor

Organiser: National Museum of Contemporary History

http://www.muzej-nz.si/sl/pages.php?id_meni=286&id=204

12.30

National Museum of Contemporary History, Celovška cesta 23

Concentration camp systems during World War II; a lesson with the testimony of a concentration camp survivor

Organiser: National Museum of Contemporary History

http://www.muzej-nz.si/sl/pages.php?id_meni=286&id=204

27 January 2017

During regular classes:

Koseze Elementary School, Ledarska ulica 23

Holocaust Remembrance Day, school radio programme

Organiser: Koseze Elementary School

9.00 and 11.00

National Museum of Contemporary History, Celovška cesta 23

Children in concentration camps, workshop for elementary- and secondary school students

Organiser: National Museum of Contemporary History

SLOVENJ GRADEC

23 January 2017

11.10

Slovenj Gradec and Muta Secondary School, Koroška ulica 11

Roma in Motion, a guided tour of the exhibition by students of the Slovenj Gradec and Muta Secondary School

Organiser: Slovenj Gradec and Muta Secondary School in cooperation with the Centre of Jewish Cultural Heritage Synagogue Maribor

Exhibition guidance will also be provided by students of the Slovenj Gradec and Muta Secondary School.

STARŠE

23 January 2017

12.00

Starše Elementary School, Starše 5

No Child's Play: Children during the Holocaust – Creativity and Play, exhibition opening with cultural programme delivered by Starše Elementary School students (the exhibition is open until 10 February 2017)

Organiser: Starše Elementary School in cooperation with the Centre of Jewish Cultural Heritage Synagogue Maribor

PESNICA PRI MARIBORU

25 January 2017

11.00

Pesnica Elementary School, Pesnica pri Mariboru 44

Anne Frank and her Peers from Maribor, exhibition opening with a cultural programme performed by Pesnica Elementary School students and a lecture by Boris Hajdinjak entitled There's a story behind every name – Anne Frank and her Peers from Maribor

Organiser: Pesnica Elementary School in cooperation with the Centre of Jewish Cultural Heritage Synagogue Maribor and First Maribor Grammar School

MARIBOR

6 January 2017

11.00

Centre of Jewish Cultural Heritage Synagogue Maribor, Židovska ulica 4

Stone Tears: Remembrance and Learning about the Holocaust and Genocide against Roma, workshop for teaching professionals

Organiser: Centre of Jewish Cultural Heritage Synagogue Maribor

http://www.sinagogamaribor.si/; https://www.facebook.com/SinagogaMaribor

26 January 2017

10.30

Drago Kobal Elementary School Maribor, Tolstojeva ulica 3

Stone Tears: Remembrance and Learning about the Holocaust and Genocide against Roma, exhibition opening with cultural programme delivered by Drago Kobal Elementary School students

Organiser: Drago Kobal Elementary School in cooperation with the Centre of Jewish Cultural Heritage Synagogue Maribor

ILIRSKA BISTRICA

27 January 2017

During regular classes:

Ilirska Bistrica Grammar School, Ulica IV Armije 1

Classes devoted to the memory of the Holocaust and its victims

Organiser: Ilirska Bistrica Grammar School

LENDAVA

27 January 2017

9.00

Synagogue Lendava – Slovenian Holocaust Museum, Spodnja ulica 5

History lesson, programme for Bilingual Elementary School Lendava I students

Organiser: Lendava Gallery-Museum with cooperation with Bilingual Elementary School Lendava I

THE HONORARY PATRON OF THE PROJECT SHOAH – LET US REMEMBER, 2017, IS

BORUT PAHOR, PRESIDENT OF THE REPUBLIC OF SLOVENIA

ORGANISERS: Academy of Music in Ljubljana; Cankarjev Dom Cultural and Congress Centre; Centre of Jewish Cultural Heritage Synagogue Maribor; Bilingual Elementary School Lendava I; Lendava Gallery-Museum; Ilirska Bistrica Grammar School; Music Society Glasbena Matica Ljubljana; Hotel Mitra Ptuj; II. Gimnazija Maribor; Ljubljana Jewish Cultural Centre; Cultural Society Article 7 for Austrian Styria – Pavel's House, Potrna/Laafeld; Lendava Cultural Society; Maribor Library; Intermunicipal Museum of Kamnik; Mini Teater Ljubljana; National Museum of Contemporary History; Drago Kobal Elementary School Maribor; Koseze Elementary School; Pesnica Elementary School; Starše Elementary School; Murska Sobota Regional and Study Library; Prešeren Theatre Kranj; First Maribor Grammar School; RTV Slovenia; Salon of Applied Arts Maribor; Synagogue Lendava – Slovenian Holocaust Museum; Slovene Chamber Music Theatre; Slovenj Gradec and Muta Secondary School; Maribor University Library; Pivec Publishing House; Scientific Research Centre of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts; Lendava Association of Cultural Societies; Slovenian Association of World War II Veterans – Coordination of Camp Committees.

PROJECT COORDINATOR: Centre of Jewish Cultural Heritage Synagogue Maribor

The project Shoah – Let Us Remember, 2017, is financially supported by the Municipality of Maribor and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Slovenia.

Some events are sponsored by the Municipality of Ljubljana, the Embassy of the State of Israel, the European Union (Creative Europe programme) and the Municipality of Lendava/Lendva.

Organisers of events reserve the right to amend the programme. Visitors are cordially requested to follow notifications on the websites of particular organisers.

Sweden

The Living History Forum is explicitly tasked by the Swedish government to spread awareness about this day and the Forum has since 2003 consistently and purposefully worked to inform about and support the commemoration of this day of remembrance. A significant growing widespread awareness of the commemoration of January 27th in Sweden, the Holocaust Memorial Day, is visible since some years.

Every year the Forum produces a mini exhibition on a specific theme connected to the memory of the Holocaust. This year, 2017, the theme is Identity and Categorizing. A printable exhibition has been produced in collaboration with Anne Frank House in the Netherlands. The exhibition is available from our website and marketed towards Swedish public libraries and schools. We also propose pedagogical workshops for schools connecting to the theme of the exhibition.

All over Sweden different kind of ceremonies and programs are taking place, in communities, schools, by organizations and in churches. The Living History Forum compiles a digital calendar where people can find out where and how they can participate in a commemoration. You can find information here. 

In Stockholm the Forum is in charge of a ceremony held at Raoul Wallenberg’s Square in the city center of Stockholm. There will be speeches by the Director of the Living History Forum, Dr. Ingrid Lomfors, Livia Fränkel, survivor of the Holocaust and Swedish author Göran Rosenberg followed by a presentation by a story telling network basing their work on Holocaust survivor’s memories, “Do not stop telling”, followed by a musical performance prior to the invitation of the public to light candles.

In the evening of the 27^th of January the Living History Forum is also taking part in a commemoration ceremony arranged by the Roma community.

Switzerland

On 27 January 2017, the Federal Department of Foreign Affairs (FDFA) publishes an official announcement on its website (EN, DE, FR, IT) concerning the Holocaust Remembrance Day and the incoming Swiss chairmanship of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance.

The highlight of the International Holocaust Remembrance Day will be a ceremony in Bern under the patronage of distinguished personalities from the diplomatic corps, the government, Jewish organizations and universities (program). Ambassador Benno Bättig, Secretary-General of the FDFA and incoming chair of the IHRA, will sum-up the priorities and projects of the chairmanship. He will also read the Message of the President of the Confederation, Federal Councilor Doris Leuthard, who will not be able to attend in person. A testimony by Professor Ivan Lefkovits, a Holocaust survivor and editor of a series of memoirs, will be at the heart of the ceremony.

The Swiss Conference of Cantonal Ministers of Education has published a new booklet (DE, FR, IT) with an overview of teaching materials. The ceremony at the United Nations office in Geneva on 26 January is organized with the financial support of the FDFA.

Several activities and ceremonies have also been organized in some cantons and schools, for example:

In Geneva the  « 14^e Journée de la Mémoire de l’Holocauste et de la prévention des crimes contre l’humanité » is dedicated to the topic of crossing borders. The program encompasses several school activities, as well as a film and a lecture for a wide audience.

At the Cultural Centre of Lugano (Ticino) a joint event is organized by various associations (Associazione Svizzera-Israele, Fondazione Federica Spitzer and Servizio per l’integrazione degli stranieri, LuganoInScena) (see invitation by cantonal authorities).

United Kingdom

Holocaust Memorial Day Trust

On 26 January 2016 the Holocaust Memorial Day 2017 UK Commemorative Ceremony will take place in Westminster at 2.15pm, by invitation only.

This year the theme for HMD is How can life go on? This broad theme asks participants to think about what happened after the Holocaust, after genocides and of our own responsibilities in the wake of such a crime.

In the UK the national focal point will be the UK Commemorative Ceremony in central London, which will see hundreds of survivors and the civic, faith and political leadership of the country gather together on 26 January. Guests will listen to speeches from high profile individuals, readings, music and survivor testimony, which will explore the theme of How can life go on?

In addition to the national ceremony, HMDT is supporting around 6,000 local activities for HMD 2017 with free resources and activity ideas. Groups as diverse as schools, prisons, workplaces, museums, faith/ interfaith organisations and councils will encourage their audiences to learn the lessons of the past to create a safer, better future. HMDT hopes to build on the success of HMD 2016 which saw a 55% rise in the number of local activities.

HMD is also being marked across the UK online, with a short film being released in mid-January which aims to raise awareness of the day and highlight present day examples of identity-based intolerance and hate. An online microsite for HMD 2017 has been set up (howcanlifegoon.hmd.org.uk) where the general public are being encouraged to engage with this year’s theme online by submitting artistic responses to a Wall of Life.

JW3

On 27 January 2017 from 10.30am to 12.15pm Holocaust Memorial Day will be commemorated at JW3, 341-351 Finchley Road, London NW3 6ET.

JW3 have invited the Mayor of Camden, Sir Eric Pickles MP, Ambassadors from several countries and Holocaust Survivors. Attendees will also include dignitaries and representatives from communal organisations, local clergy, police and students. The commemoration will include a keynote speech, short readings, candle-lighting and memorial prayer. The keynote speeches will be given by Trudy Gold, Howard Jacobson and Anita Lasker-Wallfisch. Mike Freer MP together with Tulip Siddiq MP will speak and readings will be given by Dame Janet Suzman. There will also be a music recital by Robert Max and Zoe Salomon.

Tickets are free of charge but must be booked through the link as places are limited. For further information please click the link. 

Association of Jewish Refugees

The Association of Jewish Refugees’ Holocaust Memorial Day ceremony will take place on Tuesday 24 January at the Belsize Square Synagogue, London, which was founded by the Jewish refugees who fled Nazi occupied Europe. Emeritus Rabbi, Rodney Mariner, will lead the service and begin by overseeing a candle lighting ceremony.

The AJR are honoured that HE The German Ambassador, Dr Peter Ammon, will be the guest speaker addressing AJR members and colleagues on the theme for HMD 2017: How can life go on? AJR member, Eva Clarke, who was born in the Mauthausen concentration camp in April 1945 directly prior to the camp’s liberation, will give a testimony of her story; she and her mother were the only survivors of their immediately family, 15 members of whom were murdered in Auschwitz-Birkenau.

The AJR’s intern from Action Reconciliation Service for Peace (ARSP), Merrit Jagusch, will give a response from the perspective of a young German. ARPS interns take up placements around the world at organisations that work on post-Holocaust issues.

The Channel Islands

Guernsey will be holding a brief non-denominational church ceremony at lunchtime on 27 January in St Peter Port town church which will follow the outdoor wreath-laying at the small Jewish memorial in St Peter Port. The Jewish memorial names the three Jewish women deported from Guernsey to France in April 1942, from where they were rounded up three months later and sent to Auschwitz, where they perished. It will be the first time that these events have taken place since the Holocaust bill was passed in the local parliament. Accordingly there will be a parliamentary recess at midday on 27 January to allow the politicians to attend the ceremony. Both events are open to members of the public. This event is being organised by the Dean of Guernsey.

In Jersey a Holocaust Memorial Day morning ceremony will be held on 27 January in the Occupation Tapestry Gallery in St Helier (which features a 13-panel tapestry telling the story of the German occupation). There will be a guest speaker and the Bailiff speaks and there are readings and poems and musical pieces. The event is open to members of the public. After the ceremony people will gather outside, at the Lighthouse Memorial to the 'Jersey 21' - those islanders who died in Nazi camps and prisons on the continent. Wreaths will be laid by community leaders. This event is organised by the local Holocaust Memorial Day committee.

United States

On 26 January, at the invitation of Temple Israel of Greater Miami and Holocaust Memorial Miami Beach, along with the personal involvement of Kristen Rosen Gonzalez, a Miami Beach City Commissioner, Head of the US Delegation and Special Envoy for Holocaust Issues, Thomas Yazdgerdi, will speak at a Holocaust seder on January 26 at Temple Israel in honor of International Holocaust Remembrance Day, focusing on the importance of commemorating this day, engaging with the countries of central and eastern Europe to pass legislation or otherwise make it easier for Holocaust survivors and their heirs to have their property returned or be provided with compensation; protecting Jewish cultural and religious properties abroad, such as Jewish cemeteries and synagogues and promoting Holocaust remembrance and education through U.S. leadership in international and national bodies. 

Venue: Temple Israel of Greater Miami, Miami, Florida, USA

More information 

USHMM

The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum will hold an International Holocaust Remembrance Day ceremony in the Museum’s Hall of Remembrance. Members of the diplomatic corps, U.S. government officials, and Museum leadership will join Holocaust survivors in memorializing the victims of Nazi Germany’s genocide of European Jewry. This year’s ceremony assumes an added significance with the global rise in hatred and antisemitism.

The commemoration will feature the reading of victims’ names, a musical performance by Holocaust survivor and Museum volunteer Jacqueline Mendels Birn, and a candle lighting ceremony.  The Honorable Björn Lyvall, Ambassador of Sweden to the United States will deliver the keynote address. Holocaust survivors and Museum volunteers Josiane Traum  and Michel Margosis will provide reflections on the day and recite the Kaddish, respectively. 

The ceremony will be livestreamed at ushmm.org/watch. Viewers are invited to share their thoughts on social media using hashtag #holocaustremembrance.

In addition to the ceremony at the Museum, versions of the Museum’s traveling exhibition, State of Deception: The Power of Nazi Propaganda will be on display at the United Nations in New York City; the National World War II Museum in New Orleans; and at the Paris Town Hall. 

Observer Countries

Albania

In the framework of the commemoration of the International Holocaust Remembrance Day, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Albania has planned to organize on January 27, 2017 the conference“We remember. Promoting human rights through the lens of Holocaust education and remembrance”

This Conference aims to present to the public the suffering of the Jews during the World War II and at the same time to stress the importance and the role of Human Rights in protecting human dignity and human life. The Conference will be held at the premises of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Albania.

As in previous years invitees will include Cabinet ministers, representatives of diplomatic corps accredited in Tirana, parliamentarians, representatives of religious communities and civil society, as well as members of families that have survived the holocaust.

Australia

Sydney Jewish Holocaust Centre

The Sydney Jewish Museum will hold a commemorative Holocaust Remembrance event on Sunday 29 January at 11am. Julian Leeser the newly elected member of the House of Representatives in Federal parliament will deliver the keynote address. The Sydney Jewish Museum will invite other parliamentary members, consular officials and dignitaries. The event is supported by the UN Consul to Australia, Chris Woodthorpe.

More information 

Melbourne Jewish Holocaust Centre

The Melbourne Jewish Holocaust Centre in Australia will commemorate UN International Holocaust Remembrance Day 2017 on Monday 30 January at 7pm. The event has been organised by the Jewish Holocaust Centre and the Jewish Community Council of Victoria. Mrs Baba Schwartz, Holocaust Survivor, will provide testimony.

More information

Bulgaria

On 27 January the Bulgarian Delegation to the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance,  representatives from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Ministry of Education, State Archives Agency and Sofia University will hold a workshop, entitled " Diplomats rescue Jewish refugees during the Holocaust" at Sofia University. Attending the event will be representatives from the diplomatic corps in Bulgaria, diplomats from the MFA of the Republic of Bulgaria, experts from the Ministry of science and education, Archives State agency, representatives from the Jewish organization based in Sofia, and students,

The main objective of the workshop is to highlight the role of diplomats who issued transit visas to Jews. The session will be moderated by Prof. Albena Taneva - Sofia University

Key note speakers:

Ms. Ivanka Gezenko - expert - - Archives State Agency  

Addressing the audience will be:

- H.E. Irit Lillian - Ambassador of the Sate of Israel

- H.E. Eric Rubin - Ambassador of the USA

- H.E. Stefano Baldi - Ambassador of Italy

- H.E. Qirjako Kureta - Ambassador of Albania

- Enrique Criado - DCM Embassy of Spain

- representatives of other embassies /tbc/

The former Yugoslav republic of Macedonia

The commemorative ceremony on the occasion of the International Holocaust Remembrance Day was held in the premises of theMinistry of Foreign Affairs on 26 January 2017.

10:00.  (Amphitheater of the MFA): Official opening of the ceremony

10:05 – 11:00

Official addresses by:      

• H.E. Minister of Foreign Affairs or the Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Macedonia
• Mrs. Berta Romano-Nikolik, President of the Jewish Community in the Republic of Macedonia
• H.E. Jess L. Baily, Ambassador of the United States to the Republic of Macedonia
• H.E. Jacek S. Multanowski, Ambassador of Poland to the Republic of Macedonia
• Mrs. Sarale Gutman from Israel, daughter of Mrs. Gita Shammy, the only Jew from Macedonia who survived the Holocaust in the concentration camp Auschwitz-Birkenau

11:00 - 11:30 

• Prof. Dr. Teon Dzingo of the Institute of National History, Skopje will present the Macedonian edition of the book “Mishloach Manot – A Life Story of Shammy-Kalderon family from Bitola, Macedonia” written by Mrs. Gita Shammy
• Reading of selected parts of the book “Mishloach Manot” by members of the theater section of the Young Educational Forum, Skopje

11:30  (VIP Entrance Hall of the MFA)

• Promotion of the book “Mishloach Manot”, published by the Holocaust Fund of the Jews from Macedonia

1. Central event

The Commemorative ceremony, held in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, had in its focus the promotion of the book “Mishloach Manot – A Life Story of Shammy-Kalderon family from Bitola, Macedonia” written by Mrs. Gitta Shammy who survived the Holocaust in the concentration camp Auschwitz-Birkenau.

A special guest at the ceremony was Mrs. Shammy’s daughter, Mrs. Sarale Gutman Kalderon who came from Israel.  She shared her memories about her mother’s life and stories underlying that her goal was to write her life story for the next generations to come "I wrote what I wrote not in order to make you sad…My goal is that my children and grandchildren will never forget what we had experienced". Prof. Dr. Teon Dzingo of the Institute of National History, Skopje presented the book and members of the Young Educational Forum theater section Skopje read selected parts of the book.

In his opening address the Minister of Foreign Affairs Mr. Nikola Poposki said that today, tomorrow and in the years to come it is our duty and obligation to commemorate and remember all the Holocaust victims, including 7,144 Jews of the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia deported to the death camp Treblinka.  

The ceremony was also addressed by the President of the Jewish Community, Mrs. Berta Romano – Nikolik and the ambassadors of the USA, Poland and Israel. They, among others, pointed out that future generations would not have the opportunity to hear the truth from those who survived the Holocaust and it is our obligation to write, to speak, to preserve, to educate, to research, to document and to transfer. Whether our own families have personal connections to these horrors or not, none of us should ever forget that behind each of the victims was not a number, but a name and the story of a life cut short.

The ceremony was attended by representatives of the Government, Jewish Community, diplomatic core, academia, media, civil society etc. and received large coverage in the media.

Special guests were pupils and members of the Young Educational Forum who are implementing the project “Anne Frank – History for Today” (travelling exhibition, education and training work-shops etc.). The exhibition, following its inauguration in the MFA last year, has been presented in number of  cites and viewed by around 13.000 visitors of which 10.000 young people.

2. Other activities

 A memorial concert organized by the well-known „Erweckte Stimmen Forum-Wien“ and supported by the Austrian Embassy in the Republic of Macedonia was held in the Holocaust Memorial Center of the Jews from Macedonia.

A documentary entitle “Jews in Macedonia” was broadcasted on national TV on 25, 26 and 27 January 2017.

Mrs. Sarale Gutman Kalderon gave interviews and statements for a number of TV and radio broadcasters, as well as newspapers.

Turkey

The official commemoration ceremony will be held in Ankara on January 27, 2017. The event is to be hosted by Ankara University with the participation of the Deputy Prime Minister of Turkey. At the event, the Deputy Prime Minister, the Rector of Ankara University, the Head of Turkish Delegation to IHRA and the Head of Turkish Jewish Community of Turkey will deliver speeches. After the speeches a concert will take place. High level state officials, corps diplomatique in Ankara, academics, students and the members of Turkish Jewish Community are expected to participate.

Portugal

As in the past, the official commemoration of the 27 of January will take place in Parliament and will include different events:

An exhibition on Portuguese victims of the Nazi concentration system; this exhibition has been prepared by students of Escola de Vilela, a school of the public system located in the north of the country; some of the students, between the age of 15 and 17 years old, will present the exhibition;

Also on the 26^th, a public session presided and addressed by the Speaker of Parliament; other speakers will be the Head of the Jewish Community and the Heads of the Permanent Commissions of the Parliament on Fundamental Rights and Freedoms and on Education; a journalist will introduce her book on the Portuguese victims of the concentration camps and the movie “Eichmann Show” will be viewed.

On the 27^th the Plenary of the Parliament will meet and adopt a resolution honouring the Victims of the Holocaust; one minute of silence will take place.

Also on the 27^th the Government, through the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, will issue a statement honouring the victims and addressing the current situation in relation to racism, intolerance, xenophobia and antisemitism.

Also as in the past, a webinar will be released by the Ministry of Education (Directorate General of Education)  throughout the school system for teachers and students to use in their local commemoration. This year’s webinar will consist of an interview of  João Paulo Avelãs Nunes, an academic of Coimbra University who has researched on WWII related issues; he is addressing the Holocaust and other genocides.

Commemorative events will also take place in universities and in schools, in many cases with the support of their municipal authorities and of NGO’s like Memoshoá.

Permanent International Partners

UNESCO

On 26 January 2017, the UNESCO cmmemoration will take place under the theme "Educating for a Better Future: The Role of Historic Sites and Museums in Holocaust Education". It will examine the current situation of historic sites of massacre and persecution and discuss challenges faced by memorials and museums, not only as bearing witness to the crimes, a role which will soon no longer be assumed by survivors, but also as central educational institutions.  These issues will be explored during a round-table with directors of major Holocaust museums.

On this occasion, UNESCO will also host an unprecedented exhibition prepared by the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum, which will be presented for the first time to the public and inaugurated by the Museum's Director, Mr Piotr Cywinski. The exhibition will display personal items belonging to victims, excavated from the site of the crematoria in 1967, lost for years, and recently rediscovered by the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum.

The Official Ceremony will follow, featuring notably a concert by world renowned musicians Ms Martha Argerich (piano) and Mr Ivry Gitlis (violin), UNESCO Goodwill Ambassador. The events are organized in partnership with the Shoah Memorial, Museum, Centre for Contemporary Jewish Documentation (France) and the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum (Poland).

For more information on this International Day and UNESCO’s action to support education about the history of the Holocaust and other genocides, please visit: http://www.unesco.org/new/holocaust-remembrance

United Nations

The Holocaust and the United Nations Holocaust Outreach Programme leads the annual observance of the International Day of Commemoration in memory of the victims of the Holocaust by United Nations offices around the world. In New York, the memorial ceremony is held in the General Assembly Hall and is open to the public and webcast live. Following official statements, Noah Klieger, Holocaust survivor and journalist, will deliver the keynote address. The event will include a memorial tribute to Elie Wiesel. The theme for the 2017 memorial ceremony and outreach activities is “Holocaust remembrance: Educating for a Better Future”. The theme emphasises Holocaust education’s universal dimension and its potential as an appropriate platform for building respect for human rights. The week of remembrance in New York will also include exhibit openings, a film screening, a discussion with NGOs, and a book signing. Please visit the event calendar [Hyperlink to http://www.un.org/en/holocaustremembrance/2017/calendar2017.html]

The Holocaust Programme provides the United Nations Information Centres (UNIC) worldwide with resources and guidance for their Holocaust remembrance activities.  UNIC activities include student briefings, ceremonies, exhibits and film screenings. This year, 131 activities will be held in 42 countries.

The Holocaust Programme, in partnership with the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, has developed a 16 poster exhibit adapted from the Museum’s exhibition, “State of Deception: the Power of Nazi propaganda”, as well as a teaching guide. The posters and guide will also available to the educators in Arabic, Chinese, Dutch, English, French, Kiswahili, Russian, Spanish and Ukrainian.