UNESCO commemorates Holocaust Remembrance Day and promotes Holocaust education amidst rising denial

Paris, 20 January. 
UNESCO will mark the International Day of Commemoration in memory of the victims of the Holocaust with an online ceremony on 27 January from 18.00 to 18.50 CET.

Director-General Audrey Azoulay will be joined by UN Secretary-General António Guterres, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, the President of Israel Isaac Herzog and Piotr Cywiński, Director of the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum in delivering welcome addresses. The ceremony will be accompanied by a performance of UNESCO Artist for Peace Renaud Capuçon from UNESCO Headquarters and by traditional prayers presented by mezzo-soprano Sofia Falkovitch from the Shoah Memorial in Paris.  

On the same day, UNESCO and the Musée d’art et d’histoire de Judaïsme will organize a virtual round table from 15.00 to 16.00 CET. International experts will discuss the work and legacy of the journalist Hersh Fenster and that of the 84 Jewish artists who died in the Holocaust and who he has portrayed in his book “Our martyred artists”.

At Headquarters in Paris, UNESCO and the Royal Photographic Society of Great Britain will display the exhibition “Generations: Portraits of Holocaust Survivors” from 20 January to 4 February. Stefania Giannini, UNESCO Assistant Director-General for Education, and Menachem Rosensaft, General Counsel and Associate Executive Vice President of the World Jewish Congress and Simon Hill, President of the Royal Photographic Society will launch the exhibition in a virtual event on 25 January at 17.00 CET.

The exhibition is organized in partnership with the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust, the Jewish News, the Imperial War Museum, and the Association for Jewish Refugees, with support from the World Jewish Congress, the Permanent Delegations of the United Kingdom and Monaco to UNESCO.

All events will be streamed in English and French via UNESCO’s social media channels.

Working alongside the United Nations Outreach Programme on the Holocaust, UNESCO is the only UN agency specifically mandated to promote Holocaust education and the prevention of genocide. UNESCO’s activities in the context of the International Day are supported by the Permanent Delegation of Germany to UNESCO.