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Commemoration of the victims of National Socialism
January 27, the anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz concentration and extermination camp, has been observed in Germany since 1996 as a national day of remembrance for all victims of National Socialism.
2024: Selected program against forgetting
Mayor Katja Dörner and the initiative to commemorate the victims of National Socialism in Bonn invited people to a memorial event on January 28, 2024 at the Schauspielhaus Bad Godesberg.
As every year, students from Collegium Josephinum Bonn helped to organize the commemoration and presented the biographies of Jews and Sinti from Bonn. Contemporary witness Pnina Katsir, who fled to Israel with her family to escape Nazi terror, came to Bonn for the fifth time to talk about the Shoah in Bonn schools and at the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung.
Bernd Braun, a member of the Bonn Theater acting ensemble, read from the book "Under my shower in Tel Aviv" by Richard C. Schneider.
The event was accompanied by music from Dr. Roman Salyutov and Agnes Grube. Salyutov is a concert pianist, conductor, musicologist and director of the Bergisch Gladbach Symphony Orchestra, Grube is an oboist and has played in the Gustav Mahler Youth Orchestra and the European Union Youth Orchestra, among others.
Mayor Katja Dörner speaks at the memorial service in the Bad Godesberg Schauspielhaus.
Astrid Mehmel, director of the memorial and the NS Documentation Center, introduced the audience to the event.
Students of the Collegium Josephinum Bonn present biographies of Jews and Sinti.
Bernd Braun, acting ensemble Theater Bonn, reads from "Under my shower in Tel Aviv" by Richard C. Schneider.
The event was accompanied musically by Dr. Roman Salyutov on the grand piano and Agnes Grube on the oboe.
(from left) Prof. Friedhelm Boll (historian and spokesperson for the Middle Rhine regional group of the association Gegen Vergessen - Für Demokratie e. V.), Pnina Katsir (contemporary witness), Mayor Katja Dörner
Review 2023
Graphic novels highlight the local dimension of crime
Remembrance Day 2023: Speech by Mayor Katja Dörner
Remembrance Day 2023: Speech by Astrid Mehmel, Director of the Memorial and NS Documentation Center
Memorial Day 2023: Exhibition Graphic Novels
Memorial Day 2023: Exhibition Graphic Novels
Remembrance Day 2023: Pupils of the Konrad-Adenauer-Gymnasium present their project
Remembrance Day 2023: Harpist Konstanze Jarczyk provided the music for the memorial service
On January 27, 2023, on the occasion of the Day of Remembrance of the Victims of National Socialism, the memorial presented an exhibition at Schauspiel Bonn together with students from Konrad-Adenauer-Gymnasium: Under the direction of Jonas Blum from the memorial, their teacher Ursula Schetter and the illustrator Greta von Richthofen, the students created graphic novel sequences from the lives of Jewish and Ukrainian forced laborers from the Nazi era in Bonn. They were based on materials and eyewitness accounts from the memorial's archive. The works impressively illustrate the biographical breaks in the lives of those portrayed in different styles and were received with great interest by the public. The exhibition was shown in the foyer of the theater for two weeks and will be made accessible at other locations in Bonn.
The project was supported by the Förderverein Gedenkstätte und NS-Dokumentationszentrum e.V., which made it possible to use Greta von Richthofen. With her help, the students learned to combine aspects of historical education with artistic techniques and subtleties of illustration and to present people who had to perform forced labor in Bonn. The local dimension of the crimes becomes clear in her pictures.
Review 2022
Greeting from Mayor Katja Dörner
In 2022, there was a digital commemoration due to the coronavirus restrictions.
Um die einzelnen YouTube-Videos zu sehen, müssen Sie hier die Datenschutz-Einstellungen freigeben.
Mayor Katja Dörner also supports the #werembember campaign, with which the World Jewish Congress commemorates the victims of the Holocaust and sets an example against anti-Semitism and racism.
Initiative to commemorate the Bonn victims of National Socialism
The commemorative event is organized annually by the City of Bonn with the Memorial and National Socialist Documentation Centre, the City Archive and City History Library, Bonn Theatre and Bonn Adult Education Centre in cooperation with the Initiative to Commemorate the Victims of National Socialism. This consists of the Association of Friends of the Memorial and the Nazi Documentation Center, the Bonn Synagogue Community, the Protestant Forum, the Catholic Educational Association, the German-Israeli Society AG-Bonn, the Society for Christian-Jewish Cooperation Bonn, the Association "Against Forgetting-for Democracy" and the Beuel Initiative against Xenophobia.
Background
On January 27, 1945, the survivors of the Auschwitz concentration and extermination camp were liberated by Soviet soldiers of the Red Army. Auschwitz stands like no other concentration and extermination camp as a symbol of the millions of murders committed by the Nazi regime, especially against Jews. In Germany, Liberation Day has been celebrated as a national day of remembrance for all victims of National Socialism since 1996. As the then Federal President Roman Herzog put it in his speech to the German Bundestag, it is intended as a central day of remembrance "to turn remembrance into a living future time and again". In 2005, the United Nations General Assembly officially declared January 27 as International Holocaust Remembrance Day in a resolution.
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