Panelists:
· WOJCIECH SOCZEWICA, Director General of the Auschwitz-Birkenau Foundation
· ÉVA KOVÁCS, Academic Program Director at the Vienna Wiesenthal Institute for Holocaust Studies
Moderation:
· ANGELA KANE, Vice President of the IIP, former United Nations Under-Secretary-General
Content:
75 years after the liberation of the Auschwitz concentration camp we look at the nature of remembrance and the current generation’s obligation towards survivors and memorial sites like Auschwitz. COVID-19 and its implications pose new challenges which need to be addressed if we want to take the words of Henry Appel seriously who said: “There is only one thing worse than Auschwitz itself…and that is if the world forgets there was such a place”.
For this purpose, the Auschwitz-Birkenau Foundation was established in 2009 in order to create an endowment to finance the conservation of all authentic remains of the former Auschwitz concentration and extermination camp, including personal items of prisoners and infrastructure elements present on the site of the Memorial.
The preservation process is costly but has been supported so far by 38 governments, some major cities and dozens of private donors who support the mission to maintain the testimonies of the Shoah and subsequently to allow future generations to learn from the tragic lessons from Auschwitz.