In the week when we commemorate the International Holocaust Remembrance Day, marking the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau, we invited participants and recipients of our programs to Zoom on Forum meetings on Holocaust memory.

The guest of meeting for international audience was Leon Weintraub, a Holocaust survivor born in 1926 in Łódź, who was willing to share his testimony with us. During the war, Leon Weintraub and his family were deported from the Łódź ghetto in 1944 to the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp, where they were separated from their relatives. After the war he began medical studies in Germany, and in 1950 returned to Poland, where he worked as a gynecologist. After 1968, he was forced to end his career in Poland and emigrated to Sweden, where he still lives today. In addition to the extremely difficult account of the war, Mr. Leon shared with the participants his remarkable story of rebuilding ties with the place associated with his family. In 2004, he reconnected with his mother’s hometown, Dobra, by meeting with students from the School of Dialogue (we invite you to watch a film depicting this meeting).

The second meeting was devoted to the role of Auschwitz in the memory of the Holocaust. The guest of the meeting was Anna Sommer-Schneider, a researcher from Georgetown University in Washington, DC and a long-time Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum guide. During the meeting, participants had the opportunity to hear about the changes in the exhibitions, as well as about the motivations and types of sensitivity that accompany visitors to the Museum from all over the world. The meeting was also an opportunity to discuss the narrative that the institution builds through its museum and commemorative practices. In view of the passing of the last witnesses, we also considered how to work with the attitudes of young people coming to the Museum.