Luxembourg’s Zentrum fir politesch Bildung and its partners are marking Holocaust Remembrance Day on Monday 27 January 2025, with events taking place from Monday 20 January to Friday 7 February, across Luxembourg.

On 27 January 1945, Soviet army troops liberated the largest concentration and extermination camp of the Nazi regime: Auschwitz-Birkenau. This death factory with its emblematic entrance gate, where more than one million people were murdered, has since become the symbol of this genocide of Jews and Roma and Sinti of Europe.

On the eve of the German invasion, Luxembourg had a Jewish population of 4,000 people, a large part of them refugees. The Jews of Luxembourg were expropriated, pursued and driven out of the country or deported to concentration camps, often passing through the former Cinqfontaines convent. Most were murdered. Only 81 of the Jews from Luxembourg who were deported survived the Shoah (Holocaust).

Holocaust Remembrance Day is held annually in Luxembourg in order to keep the memory of the Holocaust alive and to raise awareness among young people of the dangers of anti-Semitism, intolerance, racial and religious hatred. The United Nations designated 27 January as International Day of Commemoration in Memory of the Victims of the Holocaust in 2005, and it has been commemorated in Luxembourg since 2017. 

The 2025 programme includes more than 70 activities and public events in more than 20 different locations across the Grand Duchy, including:

- for children and young people from eleven years old, school screenings of the films Als Hitler das Rosa Kaninchen stahl (When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit), DasTagebuch der Anne Frank (The Diary of Anne Frank) and Führer und Verführer (Leader and Seducer) will be shown in regional cinemas. The films will be accompanied by educational workshops;

- in addition to the cinema sessions, there will be visits and workshops to the
memorial site and educational centre in Cinqfontaines, readings of the children's book Marisha. D'Meedchen aus dem Faass (Marisha. The Girl from the Barrel), and meetings with a Holocaust survivor and witnesses from the  second generation;

- the film conference, The missing image, is being organised for adults on Tuesday 21 January at the Cinémathèque in Luxembourg-Ville, and the film debate Schwaarze Schnéi (Black Snow)  will be screened on Friday 7 February at the Ciné Scala in Diekirch;

- regional cinemas across the country will screen The most precious of goods from Monday 20 January and Riefenstahl from Monday 27 January;

- to mark the 30th anniversary of the genocide in Srebrenica, the film debate Quo vadis, Aida? (Where are you going, Aida?) will be screened on Thursday 6 February at the Ciné Starlight in Dudelange, organised together with the Fata association.

Further details are available at: www.zpb.lu