Commemorating International Holocaust Remembrance Day Virtually

Eight decades after the Holocaust began, The U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum will host a ceremony on January 27, the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau, to convey the urgent responsibility to protect the lessons and legacy of Holocaust history and to defend the truth.

Although the museum has been closed due to the coronavirus, it will stream the ceremony with other Holocaust education programs on its Youtube page starting at 10 A.M. PT. Following the live broadcast, a recording will be available on the museum’s YouTube page.

The ceremony will feature testimonies from Holocaust survivors who volunteer at the museum with remarks from U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum Director Sara J. Bloomfield and the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum in PolandDirector Piotr Cywiński. Also in attendance will be Maryland Senator Ben Cardin and South Carolina Senator Tim Scott, representing the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Council; Thomas Lutz, head of the Memorial Museum’s Department of the Topography of Terror Foundation in Berlin and Jacques Fredj, director of the Mémorial de la Shoah in France.

Bloomfield told the Journal that International Holocaust Remembrance Day holds a strong meaning this year because it comes three weeks after a “man wearing a Camp Auschwitz sweatshirt was part of an attack on the U.S.Capitol.”

“As we remember the victims of the Holocaust — and the potential of their lives and the horror of their deaths — we must also remember how and why they became victims,” Bloomfield said. “Understanding what happened and what failed to happen challenges people from all walks of life to think about the dangers of unchecked anti-Semitism and racism and their own roles and responsibilities. Holocaust remembrance and understanding is about the future as much as the past and more urgent now than ever.”

The ceremony starts on January 21 from 10 a.m. to 10:30 a.m. PT. To learn more about the virtual ceremony or to see the full lineup of International Holocaust Remembrance Day events, click here.