Abstract: In diesem Sommer zeigte sich besonders deutlich, dass die Angriffe auf die Erinnerung die Arbeit der Gedenkstätten massiv behindern. Wöchentlich wurden zuletzt Hakenkreuz-Schmierereien in Buchenwald entdeckt. Das Thema verschwand dennoch für den Moment aus dem medialen Fokus. Der Grund: Am 7. Oktober überfiel die Terrororganisation Hamas die israelische Zivilbevölkerung. Der 7. Oktober bedeutet eine tiefgreifende Zäsur in der Geschichte Israels – mit drastischen Auswirkungen auch für Jüdinnen*Juden in Deutschland.
Das hat auch viel mit dem Thema dieses Lagebilds zu tun, wie aktuelle Vorfälle zeigen. Sie machen deutlich, wie das Gedenken an den Nationalsozialismus angegriffen wird, um gegen den Staat Israel zu agitieren. Israelbezogener Antisemitismus und Post-Shoah-Antisemitismus gehen oft Hand in Hand.Wegen Angriffen auf die Erinnerung von allen Seiten bekommt die Gedenkkultur Risse.
Die extreme Rechte will diese Risse im Gedenken. Risse werden mit der Zeit größer und tiefer. Spätestens 2017, mit der Dresdener Rede Höckes, wurde deutlich: Die extreme Rechte will noch mehr. Sie will die Gedenkkultur einreißen und dagegen eine Erinnerung setzen, die die Verbrechen der Nationalsozialisten relativiert. Das hat den Effekt, dass Gedenkstätten immer öfter zum Ziel von Angriffen und Vandalismus werden.
Momentan wird die Rolle der extremen Rechten kaum diskutiert, weil der Blick – aus gutem Grund – auf die islamistischen und linken Gruppierungen gerichtet ist, die den Hamas-Terror verherrlichen und eine Grundlage für weitere antisemitische Vorfälle in Deutschland schaffen. Im Windschatten der Terror-Verherrlichung setzt die extreme Rechte ihre Angriffe auf die Erinnerung fort. In der Gedenkstätte Ahlem in Hannover (Niedersachsen) wurden Ende Oktober mehrere Gedenktafeln mit Aufklebern überklebt. Neben „Befreie dich vom Schuldkult“ war ein Aufkleber mit einer Palästina-Fahne und den Worten „Free Palestine End Israeli Occupation“ zu lesen. Ein Aufkleber der Neonazi-Gruppierung Junge Nationalisten zeigte eine blutige Israel-Fahne mit der Parole „Israel mordet und die Welt schaut zu“.
Immer wieder wird der Krieg gegen Israel mit Angriffen auf die Erinnerung verknüpft. Das Zivilgesellschaftliche Lagebild Antisemitismus #12 nimmt die Risse in der Erinnerung an den Nationalsozialismus in den Blick und ergänzt die aktuell geführte Antisemitismuskritik um eine spezifisch deutsche Facette: Jede Art von Antisemitismus in diesem Land bringt auch einen Ruf nach einem Schlussstrich mit sich.
Abstract: Public engagement with the Holocaust in Romania has developed slowly and unevenly, shaped by decades of political constraint and institutional silence. Until 1989, restricted archival access and an antifascist ideological framework marginalized the specificity of Jewish persecution, subsuming it under a generalized narrative of “victims of fascism”. A substantive public acknowledgment of Romania’s responsibility emerged only in 2004, with the adoption of the Final Report of the International Commission on the Holocaust in Romania. This belated recognition profoundly influenced the spatial articulation of memory in Bucharest.
The chapter examines the fragmented mnemonic landscape of the city through a theoretical distinction between imprints and places. Imprints are material interventions – monuments, plaques, museums – that inscribe historical facts into public space. While essential for visibility and moral acknowledgment, they operate largely as static markers. Places, by contrast, are urban sites whose latent memory is reactivated through collective engagement. Rather than merely preserving the past, they generate memory through interaction, interpretation, and embodied experience.
Through case studies – including Giurgiului Cemetery, the Bucharest Holocaust Memorial (2009), and the Memorial to the Martyrs of the Bucharest Pogrom (2016) – the chapter traces the transition from enclosed, community-bound remembrance to civic visibility. It then analyzes the pedagogical project PLACES (2021), developed with architecture students, which reconstructed the prewar addresses of the 125 pogrom victims and reinscribed them into the contemporary city through mapping, archival research, and digital interfaces.
By shifting attention from sites of death to spaces of everyday life, PLACES exemplifies a performative model of remembrance grounded in secondary witnessing. The study argues that, in the absence of living testimony, urban space itself becomes a medium of memory – capable not only of conserving history but of ethically reactivating it within the present.
Abstract: Статья посвящена актуальным практикам памяти Холокоста в разных городах России. Исследование построено на полевых материалах, собранных в результате экспедиций, которые состоялись в 2020–2023 гг. в рамках проекта «Еврейские коммеморативные практики и современный культ Победы». Экспедиционная работа велась в разных городах на Западе и Юге России. Участники проекта посетили более 20 населенных пунктов, в которых записали несколько сотен интервью с членами еврейских общин, краеведами, работниками культуры и другими людьми, интересующимися памятью об оккупации и Холокосте. Внимание автора статьи привлекло то, что в разных городах по-разному рассказывали о посещении памятников жертвам Холокоста, особенно то, что в одних городах для жителей был важен день расстрела, а в других его даже не знали. Автор статьи задалась вопросом: в какие дни в разных населенных пунктах проходят акции памяти погибших евреев и от чего зависит выбор дня посещения памятника. Проанализировав собранный материал, она выделила три модели, к которым тяготеют практики поминовения жертв Холокоста: поминовение в день расстрела (или другой вариант: в традиционные поминальные еврейские дни); поминовение в контексте памяти о Великой Отечественной войне – в День Победы или день освобождения города; поминовение в контексте международной памяти о Холокосте – 27 января или на Йом ха-Шоа.
Abstract: This study develops a novel analytical framework to advance studies of monuments. It does so by systematically integrating four elements of a monument’s assemblage – design, surroundings, rituals, and narratives – to examine their combined potential affective impact on visitors’ bodily and emotional engagement with monuments and the past these represent. These four elements will be applied in the comparison of two Dutch Second World War monuments, the National Monument on Dam Square and the National Holocaust Monument of Names. The article reflects on who or what shapes these monuments’ four elements and what kind of potential affective experiences they engender. The results show that the Holocaust Names Monument creates a sacred space for personal and active Holocaust remembrance. In contrast, the National Monument allows more profane, non-commemorative behaviour, except on 4 May, when the Annual Remembrance Day turns it into a sacred site, evoking collective sentiment and remembering of diverse victims. Despite these differences, both monuments seek to foster empathy for individual victims and a sense of responsibility through reflection. These similarities and differences have emerged over time, reflecting the influence of both individual and institutional actors involved in the monument’s design and management, as well as broader socio-political shifts in commemoration.
Abstract: The Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum received two million visitors in 2019, making it the most heavily visited museum in Poland. This entry situates tourism at Auschwitz within the broader context of Holocaust tourism by providing an historical account of the phenomenon. It begins with those visitors to the camp before 1945 who were not tourists (Nazi officials, local suppliers, engineers), drawing attention to tourism’s ethical ambiguity. Since the museum’s 1947 opening, tourists have encountered a site undergoing continual development, its exhibition spaces and its messaging evolving from the Stalinist era through the Cold War to the present period. This chapter considers how shifts in the site’s memory politics, especially regarding the representation of different victim groups, have led to unresolved tensions that still surface during the tour. It then considers some present-day challenges to the legitimacy of tourism at Auschwitz, such as visitor behaviour or the difficulties in providing an appropriate, authentic, and informative experience to large crowds. Finally, the chapter reviews different scholarly approaches to Holocaust tourism, such as dark tourism theory and empirical visitor research, before concluding with questions for future research into Auschwitz tourism.
Abstract: The past is never past, wrote William Faulkner. The great American writer had in mind his native Mississippi, but he might as well have written those words about Poland. Indeed, among history-conscious Poles, the findings of historians have had far-reaching social and political consequences that transcend the esoteric discussions of scholars. This was corroborated in recent times by the emergence of a discourse in Poland over what some have called polityka historyczna (Geschichtspolitik, or history policy), which focuses on the question of whether historians who write of the less glorious episodes in Polish history are actually acting against the interests of the nation. Many Polish historians, including the best-known scholars among them, have protested against this suggestion, which poses a clear danger to the fidelity of their discipline. The dissolution of the Communist regime in Poland at the end of the 1980s made possible the deconstruction of every aspect of contemporary history. The process of reconstruction, begun in earnest, proved to be complex and painful. This was particularly the case when dealing with the bitterest chapters in the millennial story of Polish-Jewish relations, which were, and continue to be, the subject of popular and intellectual discussion as well as serious scholarly research. Out of this process emerged a new understanding of history, one that renders much of the earlier canon on the topic virtually obsolete. It had, in fact, been under way for some years even before the collapse of Communism – especially in the pages of Poland’s extraordinarily vibrant underground press and also, to an impressive extent given the prevailing censorship, in those of Poland’s legally operated independent Catholic press. Polish émigré journals were also regularly smuggled into Poland and had significant influence. Nevertheless, it was only with the collapse of the old regime and the birth of Poland’s Third Republic that this activity could be carried out without interference and Poland could finally undergo its own Vergangenheitsbewältigung (coming to terms with the past). This chapter discusses the evolution of Poland’s confrontation with the destruction of Polish Jewry.
Abstract: The terrain of the past remains a battleground in Ukraine, where policymakers, interest groups, and individuals continue to use and abuse history for contemporary gains. The recent escalation of Russian violence has only exacerbated these processes. Apart from discussions of Ukraine and Russia’s historical relations and the Holodomor, nothing looms larger than the Holocaust in Ukraine’s ongoing memory wars, whether in discussions and denials of local collaboration and complicity in anti-Jewish violence or exercises in comparative and/or competitive suffering. This article examines the Holocaust as it played out in Ukraine and the evolving memoryscapes that emerged in its wake, homing in on two major massacres, Babyn Yar and Bohdanivka, and their memorial afterlives in Soviet Ukraine (ca. 1945–91) and independent Ukraine (1991–today). While this project briefly engages the well-trod topics of local collaboration and competitive suffering, as evidenced in competing monuments on the site of Babyn Yar itself and the larger commemorative landscape of Kyiv, it draws attention to understudied sites like Bohdanivka, which fell within the Romanian occupation zone during the war.
Abstract: Holocaust Memorial Day 2026 reached more people than ever before, with millions engaging across the UK through national moments of remembrance, education and community activity. From Light the Darkness to events in schools, workplaces and public spaces, this year showed the growing impact of coming together to remember, learn and stand against all prejudice today.
Central to this was the Light the Darkness campaign, which saw 230 buildings and landmarks illuminated in purple at 8pm as part of a nationwide act of remembrance – an increase from 200 in 2025. Delivered in partnership with Ocean Outdoor and supported by JCDecaux, Global and Bauer Media, the campaign appeared on 3,000 billboards across the UK, generating over 10 million impacts\*. HMDT’s radio advert aired more than 900 times across Global’s network, reaching a further 14 million impacts.
Engagement also grew at community level, with 3,800 organisations marking HMD – up from 3,500 the previous year. This was mirrored by a surge in digital participation on the day, with social media interactions across HMDT’s Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn rising by 140%, from 10,000 in 2025 to 24,000 in 2026.
Crucially, the 2026 impact data highlights the reversal of a decline over the past two years in secondary school participation, which had previously attracted national concern. More than 1,000 secondary schools marked Holocaust Memorial Day this year – 17% of the total number of secondary schools nationwide, which increased from just 9% last year. This was further bolstered by the reach of the charity’s educational film, *It began with words*, which was viewed by over 130,000 pupils, helping ensure that the lessons of the Holocaust remain central to younger generations.
To take a deeper look at the key moments behind this year’s commemoration, read our Impact Report for Holocaust Memorial Day 2026. From a special event hosted by Their Majesties The King and Queen to acts of remembrance in communities across the UK, the report captures the scale and significance of HMD 2026.
Abstract: In 2009, the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum took the experimental initiative of creating a Facebook page; since then, it has established accounts on other social media platforms, such as Instagram and Twitter, and is now followed by more than one million users across these networks. This chapter investigates the ways in which the Museum utilises social media, particularly with regard to its authority as an institution and site of Holocaust education and remembrance. On one hand, the Museum has fostered an online virtual community where Auschwitz victims are commemorated, the ethics of remembrance are discussed, and users’ feedback is sought and acknowledged. On the other hand, the institution uses social media to fact-check and criticise certain representations of Auschwitz, suggesting only those explicitly approved by the Museum are acceptable. This demonstrates a wider Museum dichotomy between retaining traditional, didactic practices and establishing contemporary, participatory ones.
Abstract: In this chapter, we investigate how four Italian and five German Holocaust memorials and museums, as well as three major internationally relevant Holocaust organizations, employed Facebook for Holocaust remembrance purposes during the period of pandemic lockdown. A comparison was made of the quantity and variety of activity on their Facebook pages during the months of April and May 2020, as compared with the same time span in 2019 and 2021. Although the study revealed major changes and adjustments in Holocaust institutions’ Facebook activities, both in terms of volume and type of content and regarding interaction strategies, the results show that the COVID-19 lockdown did not appear to trigger a radical change in Holocaust remembrance institutions’ use of social media. Despite the changes found in many Holocaust remembrance practices on Facebook and their growing use of digital media, the memorials and museums considered in this study appear to adopt a conservative stance in terms of the topics and themes addressed via social media and a general little change in the framework of commemoration policies. Also, despite a drive toward internationalization, as demonstrated by the Holocaust institutions’ increased use of English, there still appears to be a certain tension between local and global memories of the Holocaust.
Abstract: The severe restrictions on public life following the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic affected Holocaust memorials and museums worldwide, especially in Europe, Israel, and the United States. These measures posed significant challenges to contemporary forms of Holocaust commemoration, which were based on collaborative practices of remembering, particularly related to the experience of presence at the memorial sites. In our chapter, we ask in which ways the pandemic had an accelerating effect on global Holocaust memory by tracing, analyzing, and identifying the institutionalized use of online platforms and digital formats on social media. We present results from an online survey conducted with 32 key institutions in the field of Holocaust commemoration in the Spring and Summer of 2020 and discuss them in the context of various forms of digital activities initiated by Holocaust memorials and museums in response to the pandemic. For that purpose, we have created a comprehensive database of 45 digital projects, which were released in the first months of the pandemic, and conducted a multimodal analysis of selected projects. We identified a significant increase in social media use and digital tools, in particular video formats, helping institutions to communicate virtually with potential audiences. Memorials utilized various social media features like live streams, stories, and hashtags to implement elements of participatory memory culture that offer users the possibility to participate in new collaborative forms of mediated commemoration. In doing so, they helped to establish like-minded and co-creative commemoration communities.
Abstract: In our chapter, we investigate how the Covid-19 restrictions affected the translation of in-person commemorative ceremonies into online-only events. Whilst the majority of existing research has a relatively small scale, we have turned to the larger scope of social media data to examine wider online memory culture. To do so, we conduct comparative analysis of Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram data from institutions organising commemorative events for the liberation of Neuengamme, the massacre at Srebrenica, and the liberation of Beau Bassin together with non-institutional posts using the hashtags from these institutions. Through this analysis, we aim to answer our main research questions: how do the online discourses by institutions and the wider public compare in relation to posts using shared hashtags during major commemoration periods during Covid-19 lockdowns? To what extent did the move to remote engagement during the pandemic reconfigure the so-called bifurcation of memory culture, between institutional and popular memory discourse (Hoskins, 2014) in any way that might suggest that the lockdowns evidence a change in commemoration practices? Our findings demonstrate that despite the major anniversaries marked in 2020, related memory institutions had little impact on social media, and their commemorative approaches in these spheres were not transformed by the pandemic.
Abstract: Virtual reality and augmented reality experiences play an increasingly significant role in Holocaust memory and education as professional memory institutions continue to explore the affordances of integrating digital technologies into visitor and user experience. There is a rapidly expanding list of projects experimenting with cinematic virtual reality, photogrammetry, digital mapping, 3D modelling, 360-degree on-location survivor testimony as well as a growing portfolio of augmented and mixed reality mobile and tablet applications.
Principally being implemented as spatial technologies, several memorial sites and museums are exploring the possibilities of creating 3D graphic reconstructions of former sites of Nazi persecution in AR/VR such as the digital reconstruction of Falstad Concentration Camp, the Here: Spaces for Memory App at the Bergen-Belsen Memorial Site, the Sobibor AR exhibit, the project Auschwitz VR as well as the 360-degrees-walks at Neuengamme Concentration Camp Memorial. Going further, some digital initiatives are using VR/AR/MR technologies to zoom in on historical documents, testimonies and artefacts, notable projects include the ARt AR App at the Dachau Memorial Site and Museum which revivifies historical and contemporary drawings and paintings in-situ at the present-day site, the Anne Frank House VR which invites visitors to navigate the annex through a series of digital objects, and The Last Goodbye VR experience which foregrounds survivor testimony within Majdanek, the similarly survivor-driven Walk with Me at The Melbourne Holocaust Museum and numerous films that shape the Illinois Holocaust Museum and Education Center’s The Journey Back exhibition space.
While it is important to note that VR technology is not new and has existed for more than 30 years, it is only recently that the technology has become more widely accessible in the heritage and museum sectors (in part, due to the affordability of headsets and devices in the domestic market). The proliferation of VR and AR projects within the sector, then, raises critical questions regards the opportunities for digital Holocaust memory practice and education while also bringing to the fore issues of curation, contextualisation, visitor experience and accessibility.
This report serves as an important first step in this work. It was created as part of the research project ‘Participatory Workshops – Co-Designing Standards for Digital Interventions in Holocaust Memory and Education’, which is one thread of the larger Digital Holocaust Memory Project at the University of Sussex. The participatory workshops project have focused on six themes, each of which brought together a different range of expertise to discuss current challenges and consider possible recommendations for the future.
The themes were:
AI and machine learning
Digitising material evidence
Recording, recirculating and remixing testimony
Social media
Virtual memoryscapes
Computer games
Abstract: The social media landscape is ever-changing as is its relationship to Holocaust memory and education. In the earlier days of Facebook and Twitter’s dominance, there was a clear divide of opinions in the Holocaust sector. On one hand, some institutions were early adopters (notably the Auschwitz State Museum) and others experimented with the affordances of these platforms such as the team at Grodzka Gate, Lublin extending the analogue practice of school pupils sending letters to child Holocaust victim Henio Zytomirski onto Facebook and the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum’s ‘tweet-up’ hybrid architecture tour. On the other hand, expressions of hesitance about these participatory spaces informed the need for the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s Education Working Group to establish guidelines for using social media in this context (2014).
As practice grew, it also became somewhat formalised with most organisations predominantly focusing on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram for public engagement work, and most content presenting traditional curation of historical sources with additional narrative, promoting the organisation’s offline (or elsewhere online) work, or behind the scenes access to curator and educator experiences. Whilst, one of the
celebrated potentials about social media is their ability to help organisations to reach wider (global) audiences, little has changed online since Eva Pfanzelter’s (2014) claim that the Holocaust institutions that dominated previously offline, also dominate on social media platforms. Few others attract much engagement with their posts.
TikTok has brought both new opportunities and challenges for the Holocaust sector – organisations and individuals who have taken to creating content on the platform are seeing far greater engagement than they had on previous ones. Yet, TikTok is also one of the most data-invasive and opaque platforms regarding researcher access. Many also encounter far more Holocaust denial, distortion and trivialisation on this platform. However, the social media landscape is also far larger than the Holocaust sector has really acknowledged and much of the coded hate content that appears on mainstream platforms has been cultivated at scale on others, from 8Chan to Telegram, and gaming and VR social spaces. It is imperative therefore that we bring together a wide range of stakeholders and experts to discuss what the sector needs to move forward with its work on social media. If Holocaust memory and education is to remain visible in the ever-expanding digital world, then it must be visible across a variety of digital spaces.
This report serves as an important first step in this work. It was created as part of the research project ‘Participatory Workshops – Co-Designing Standards for Digital Interventions in Holocaust Memory and Education’, which is one thread of the larger Digital Holocaust Memory Project at the University of Sussex.
The participatory workshops project have focused on six themes, each of which brought together a different range of expertise to discuss current challenges and consider possible recommendations for the future. The themes were:
AI and machine learning
Digitising material evidence
Recording, recirculating and remixing testimony
Social media
Virtual memoryscapes
Computer games
Abstract: The article discusses the development of the symbolic meanings of Auschwitz in Poland since the end of the Second World War, taking into account the context of Polish history and memory, in particular the memory of the Holocaust and disputes surrounding it. Analyzing various kinds of representations, the article examines chronologically the major symbolisms of the former camp – Polish, international, universalist, and Jewish – as well as pointing to others, and identifying the periods of their development. The article argues that Auschwitz has had various meanings in Poland. At present, it is, among others, a symbol of the Holocaust, but not the symbol thereof.
Abstract: In this article, we analyse Il Memoriale della Shoah, the memorial of the victims of the Shoah in Milan, which was inaugurated in 2013 and, in 2015, was turned into a night shelter for destitute migrants. To understand the rhetoric and politics of the Memorial, we bring together the notions of affective practices, découpages du temps (lit. slices of time) and multidirectional memory. This analytic approach allows us to examine the nonlinear shape of remembering, the dialectic relationships between the spatialisation of time and the temporalisation of space, the ways in which emotions are brought into being semiotically in context, and the ethical questions that these feelings raise. Through detailed multimodal and affective analysis of the affordances of the built environment and its soundscape, the curation of the Memorial, the contextualisation of three guided tours (two online and one in situ) and politicised commentary on the Memorial’s decision to shelter refugees, our paper illustrates the multi-layered character of the relationship between space and time – one in which the past, the present and the future partly overlap and mobilise political action.
Abstract: In October 2021, Imperial War Museums (IWM) opened its new Holocaust Galleries in its London branch, replacing its first Holocaust Exhibition (from 2000) that had become a landmark in British Holocaust memory. Because of its comprehensive nature and intricate scenography, the new Holocaust Galleries are at the centre of almost all recent major narrative, political, and ethical debates about Holocaust representation in museums. The book provides an ideal global case-study understanding the possibilities and limitations of re-presenting trauma and violence in museums today and whether Holocaust exhibitions can promote democratic, civic, or human rights values, making it an important resource for museum practitioners, public history educators, and university researchers alike, interested in Historical, Museum, Memory, Holocaust, Genocide, or Cultural Studies. The volume brings together texts written by museum practitioners and academic scholars. It is divided in three parts: a long essay by James Bulgin, Head of Content for the new Holocaust Galleries, about the genesis and implementation of the exhibition, supplemented with briefer essays by educators and community members involved in the development of the exhibition, an extensive interview by Stephan Jaeger with IWM researchers James Bulgin and Suzanne Bardgett, and an extensive part with six critical essays by university scholars analysing the new Holocaust Galleries from numerous theoretical angles.
Abstract: In Italy, after the victory of Giorgia Meloni’s post-fascist party, “Fratelli d’Italia,” several studies began to discuss whether or not the country has come to terms with the memory of fascism, its role as an inspirer of Nazism, and the collaboration with Nazi Germany in the Holocaust. Especially the latter, scholarly literature pointed out, has failed to receive the attention it deserves. This article argues that this is particularly true with regard to public history, the way historical information and events are interpreted and presented to the general public, and focuses on public museums exhibiting the Holocaust and resistance. Evidence for this article comes from two in-depth case studies regarding the oldest yet unaltered Liberation Museum in Rome and the Museum-Monument to Racial and Political Deportees in the Nazi Lagers in Carpi. The article contends that within these museums, the narration of resistance prevails, whilst evidence of Italy’s past collaborationism remains hidden and unexhibited. In essence, these museums emphasise national heroism and sidestep Italian accountability in the Holocaust.
