Auschwitz Day
January 27 is Holocaust Remembrance Day, which is marked at the UN, EU, around Europe and elsewhere in the world. In Denmark, the commemoration has been named Auschwitz Day, where we remember victims of the Holocaust and other genocides.
Information about the Holocaust and genocide is crucially important in national and international memory. This applies both to the professional work of uncovering the past and the events, but also to the stories from those who experienced and survived them.
On Auschwitz Day in Denmark, we remember the victims of the Holocaust and the victims of the genocides that followed. It is important to remember that the victims of a genocide are not 'only' those who had to die, but also those who survived and carry around the memories of what they have seen and felt.
Here you can review previous years' programs: 2021, 2022, 2023 og 2024
Auschwitz Day in 2025
2025 marks the 80th anniversary of the liberation of KZ-Auschwitz-Birkenau, one of the most notorious concentration camps established during the Second World War. On January 27, 1945, Soviet forces entered the camp and revealed the horrifying reality of the Holocaust. This day marked a crucial turning point where the world truly began to understand the full extent of the atrocities committed by the Nazi regime. It is crucially important to hold on to the memory of the Holocaust, not least at a time when the last witnesses are quietly disappearing, and we take over the responsibility of telling the story and keeping the memory alive for future generations. International Auschwitz Day is a day of remembrance where there will be testimonies from victims of the Holocaust, testimonies from the Bosnian genocide as well as music and candle lighting. You can sign up for Auschwitz Day right now here
The program for Auschwitz Day 2025 is as follows
Kl. 19.00
Welcome by museum director Janus Møller Jensen, Danish Jewish Museum.
Kl. 19.05
Speech v. representative from the Jewish Society in Denmark
Kl. 19.10
Speech v. Minister of Justice Peter Hummelgaard.
Kl. 19.20
Testimony from the Holocaust – video interview.
Kl. 19.25
Speaking v. following Ambassadors:
Ambassador Ewa Dębska, Poland
Ambassador David Akov, Israel
Ambassador Joëlle ES Jenny, Great Britain
Kl. 19.40
Testimony from the Holocaust - video interview
Kl. 19.45
Speech by Solvej Berlau, cand.scient.soc, on education in the Holocaust.
Kl. 19.55
Testimony from the Holocaust.
Kl. 20.05
Music by Klezmer Strings (Mette Smidl, violin, Michael Møller, guitar)
Kl. 20.10
Testimony from the Bosnian genocide.
Kl. 20: 20
Candle lighting by children from Carolineskolen and subsequent music by the Klezmer Strings orchestra (Mette Smidl, violin, Michael Møller, guitar)
Kl. 20: 25
End of Finn Schwarz, chairman of the board, Danish Jewish Museum
Kl. 20: 30
Refreshments and socializing in Den Sorte Diamant.
See or revisit the commemorations of Auschwitz Day
2024
In 2024, the Danish Jewish Museum held Auschwitz Day on behalf of Copenhagen Municipality's Culture and Leisure Administration. Among the speakers this evening were Minister of State Mette Frederiksen, Chairman of the Jewish Community in Denmark Henri Goldstein, as well as testimonies from Holocaust survivors.
2021
In 2021, Auschwitz Day was held online due to Covid19. Among the speakers were Justice Minister Nick Hækkerup, Israel's ambassador, Norway's ambassador and Albania's ambassador. This year we reflected on the Holocaust as an expression of anti-Semitism in its most extreme form. But the phenomenon is much older, and anti-Semitism still exists and is growing in a number of countries around the world, including in Denmark.
2023
In 2023, we had a special focus on marking the 80th anniversary of the escape and rescue of the Danish Jews in October 1943. It was also marked during the year through a number of initiatives and activities. It is an important story in an otherwise dark time, which will be remembered in both a Danish and international context.
2022
In 2022, we reflected on the importance of passing on the memories of the witnesses of the Holocaust and genocide to the next generation. The program consisted of speeches from Minister of Church and Culture Ane Halsboe-Jørgensen, the ambassadors of Israel and the Netherlands and testimonies from survivors of genocide.
Lessons
Visit institutions with teaching courses
Should the teaching take place outside the classroom?
Then you can read here about some of the museums and institutions that have dissemination services targeted at different levels of education.
The institutions offer educational courses, city walks and guided tours about, among other things, October 1943, the Jewish Action, the Holocaust and the resistance movement.
Auschwitzdagdanmark.dk
Auschwitz Day Denmark is a nationwide project supported by the Ministry of Children and Education's efforts to promote education and remembrance of the Holocaust and other genocides and to prevent anti-Semitism.
The project's goal is to reach a large number of students in secondary school (8th-10th grade) and in vocational training. In 2024, Auschwitz Day Denmark again offers a unique opportunity to receive free guest teacher visits with Holocaust survivor Ib Katznelson or history-savvy professionals.
Via the website, interested schools can book the two-hour free guest teacher visit, where the students learn about the Holocaust via activating teaching.
The project was developed by the Network for Nazism and Holocaust Studies (NNHS).
The Occupation Museum
The Occupation Museum offers tours and information for school classes and youth programs in the museum's exhibitions and city walks in Aarhus.
The Occupation Museum tells the dramatic story of Aarhus during the occupation. The museum is housed in Aarhus' old town hall and later police station, which from the autumn of 1944 until the liberation was the headquarters of the dreaded German security police, the Gestapo. The preserved cells and basement rooms create an atmospheric setting for an exhibition that tells about everyday life, resistance and Nazi oppression.
The purpose of the museum is to document, preserve and communicate occupation-era Aarhus. The Occupation Museum is a department under Den Gamle By.
The Danish Jewish Museum
The Danish Jewish Museum offers group tours of the museum's exhibitions and architecture. In the design of the Danish Jewish Museum, the architect, Daniel Libeskind, took the starting point in October 1943.
The museum is also current with the special exhibition Flight and Persecution in the 20th Century, which, based on the escape and rescue of the Danish Jews in October 1943, tells a European story about the escape and persecution of Jews.
In addition, the museum offers tours of the two Jewish burial grounds in Copenhagen and city walks in Jewish Copenhagen.
The Freedom Museum
The Freedom Museum offers various teaching courses and city walks for primary and secondary schools about the Danish resistance and the occupation during the Second World War. The students learn, among other things, why resistance was not always black and white.
The Freedom Museum is the museum of Denmark's resistance during the occupation in 1940-45. Through various historical figures who lived during the occupation, the Freedom Museum shows some of the many difficult dilemmas and choices the Danes faced when the country was occupied.
The Freedom Museum belongs to the National Museum.
Skolejenesten.dk
Skoletjenesten.dk is a national website which collects and presents educational offers in external learning environments, so that teachers, pedagogues and trainers in day care, primary school and youth education can find relevant offers in planning their teaching.
The school service has many different educational offers about, among other things, October 1943, the Second World War and escape.
Websites with educational material
Below you can get an overview of some of the many exciting websites that have free educational material for download.
The material can be used directly in teaching in the classroom and deals in different ways with the Jewish action in October 1943 and the Holocaust.
Folkekdrab.dk
On folkedrab.dk you can find a wide range of ready-made courses, exercises, guides, materials and films that can be included in teaching about the Holocaust and other genocides. The material suggests interdisciplinarity and a general reflection on citizenship. In addition to the imaginative teachers' forum, students themselves can use the website to seek out knowledge on their own.
Folkedrab.dk has a whole theme that deals with it October '43 and the flight to Sweden. Here you can e.g. find articles and sources that shed light on the Jewish action, the escape, help for the Danish Jews, the hidden children and much more, as well as a film about the escape to Sweden.
The website's exciting and factual teaching material is produced in collaboration between researchers, experts, journalists and communication professionals. The website is operated by DIIS - Danish Institute for International Studies, which is an independent, public research institute in Denmark.
Never.dk
Never.dk is a digital dissemination channel for educational material and activities about the Holocaust and other genocides. The materials are designed for primary school and secondary education, respectively, and can be downloaded free of charge from the website.
The website is run by the Ministry of Children and Education, and as part of the overall effort to promote education and remembrance of the Holocaust and other genocides, you can find a number of offers for both teachers and schools.
The Danish Jewish Museum
On The Danish Jewish Museums website you can find teaching courses for different grade levels with associated teaching material for download. The museum continuously develops new teaching courses that can be carried out in the classroom. The teaching material covers as many subjects as possible, but history, social studies, religion and Christian studies have a natural weight in the subject matter.
The website is operated by the Danish Jewish Museum, which is the main cultural history museum for Danish Jewish history from the 1600th century to the present day. A core story of Danish Jewish history and the museum's area of responsibility is the Jewish Action and the flight of Danish Jews from Nazi-occupied Denmark to neutral Sweden across the Øresund in October 1943.
The school service
The flight over the Øresund 1943 is a teaching material for the oldest classes of the public school. The aim is to introduce the students to the local history linked to the Holocaust and thus make the history present.
The teaching material about the flight of the Jews in 1943, with a particular focus on Rudersdal Municipality, can be downloaded and worked with at school.
The museum's material can function as an introduction to learning about the Holocaust or it can be a perspective after teaching about the Holocaust. The tasks are intended to promote the students' empathy and make them aware that actions are shaped by their contemporaries and that history is not given in advance.
The material consists of a teacher's guide and 6 group assignments. The material has been prepared by Rudersdal Museums.
Voices in the Void
Voices in the Void is a website with educational material that can be used in conjunction with the animated film of the same name. The film lasts 18 minutes and is about the then 14-year-old Bent Melchior and his family's escape to Sweden in October 1943. Together with the teaching material, the film invites debate, which must help prevent history from repeating itself.
The target group is secondary school and upper secondary school. Both films and teaching material are available free of charge, and the links to these are collected below.
Click here to access the teaching material
Watch the film here Danish or engelsk
Humanity in Action has produced the film, while the associated educational material has been developed by the Ghetto Fighter House Museum with the Danish Jewish Museum as historical consultants. The Danish version of the teaching material is being prepared. Voices in the Void is part of a film trilogy produced by Humanity in Action that you can find further information about here.
"Wounded woman" by Bernhard Reders and photo by Ole Akhøj
October 1943.dk
October 1943.dk is a website with interdisciplinary teaching material. The website is intended as an idea bank and an inspiration for how to work with Oktober '43 in connection with AT courses in high school. The materials have been prepared by grammar school teachers and can be found divided by subject on the website. You can find materials and literature on subjects such as October '43, the occupation period, the Second World War and the Holocaust.
Oktober1943.dk is run by Humanity in Action in Denmark, which works to promote human rights, diversity and active citizenship in and outside of Denmark. Humanity in Action in Denmark is a non-profit NGO.
Danish Jews in Theresienstadt
Danish Jews in Theresienstadt is a website which is based on a larger research project. On the website you can find more than 60 interactive digital maps of the memories of the surviving Danish Jews in Theresienstadt. It is a map of Theresienstadt as it was experienced and remembered - a so-called typography of memory.
On the maps are marked where the Danish Jews lived, worked, got food and other places and moods that are told about in their memories. The card can be used in the classroom or as a guide if you are going to visit Theresienstadt.
The website was created on the basis of fieldwork carried out in Terezín in the spring of 2018, and it is currently run in collaboration with the Network for Nazism and Holocaust Studies, NNHS.
Mytedetektiverne.dk
In several ways, the historian's work with the sources is similar to that of a detective, and this is exploited on the teaching side Mytedetektiverne.dk. Here, school pupils must learn to work with historical traces and reflect on history. The students are detectives investigating a myth – its origin, development and function. In their quest for knowledge, students must search, find and compare sources to gain knowledge about the past.
On the website there is, among other things, a focus on the Holocaust and the Jewish Action.
The myth detectives are a collaboration between Odense City Museums, primary school teachers and Historiens Hus.
Snublesten.historienshus.dk
Snublesten.historienshus.dk is a dissemination website app for stumbling blocks in Denmark. When you come within 50 meters of a stumbling block, you can read and hear the victim tell his story on the website app. The presentation is intended for all those interested in history and especially school classes, who can go on a discovery of history in the urban space. This dissemination site is a story-telling site that supplements and supports the existing sites about stumbling blocks, which are run by voluntary groups.
The app was created to ensure greater accessibility and a nationwide dissemination of stumbling blocks and October 1943 by placing a digital dissemination layer over the physical stones in urban spaces. At the same time, teaching material is being developed that will be available from the autumn, when further stumbling blocks will be laid in several Danish cities.
The app was developed by Historiens Hus and with content produced by the Danish Jewish Museum based on the authentic personal stories behind the stumbling blocks. The project has received financial support from the Ministry of Education. Try the app here
Here you will find links to the websites that form the basis for the abolition of stumbling blocks in Denmark: The stumbling block in Denmark, the stumbling block on Funen, the stumbling block in Fredericia and Taulov, stumbling block in North Jutland.
Collaborators around the marking
