This year’s Yom HaShoah, Holocaust Remembrance Day, is an especially important anniversary. In January, we marked 75 years since the liberation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp. Since then, through our programs on and off campus, and in collaboration with the Center for Jewish Studies, we were able to reflect on the scope of the destruction of European Jewry but also on the heroic resistance and the resiliency of the survivors. 

At the University of Minnesota, we strive to keep the memory of the Holocaust alive. This year, the Center for Holocaust & Genocide Studies was honored to support the work of Kathryn Huether (Ph.D. candidate in Musicology) as an Interdisciplinary Doctoral Fellow as she works to curate an audio guide for the Treblinka memorial site. Huether also received the Theresa and Nathan Bearman Graduate Fellowship in Jewish Studies in support of her research. Avraham Shaver, a recent graduate from the Center for Jewish Studies, earned a prestigious internship position with the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. In addition to the individual achievements of students, the University continues to offer a breadth of courses on Holocaust history, memory, and representation.

As we reflect back on the legacy of the Holocaust today, we encourage you to utilize some of the resources available digitally, including artist Felix de la Concha’s Portraying Memory project and the series of testimonies from the Center for Holocaust & Genocide Studies’ Survivors, Witnesses and Liberators collection. 

Find a selection of survivor testimonies below from the Portraying Memory project.