International Holocaust Remembrance Day
International Holocaust Remembrance Day 2026
The purpose of our event is to discuss the events that led the creation of a concentration camp system and the Holocaust. We want to remember the lessons of the Holocaust, which killed roughly 6 million Jews and thousands of other enemies of Nazi Germany. We would like to understand the lessons of the Holocaust to raise awareness of the outcomes, such as intolerance towards minorities and ‘others’, blind obedience to authority, and as well as indifference and inaction by individuals in civic society. Each year we invite guest speakers to help us understand and interpret these lessons.
On January 27th, in honor of International Holocaust Remembrance Day, a presentation entitled "Between Life and Death" was given by guest speaker Teresa Wontor-Chichy, historian, Ph.D., and Curator, in the Research Centre of the State Museum Auschwitz-Birkenau in Oswiecim, Poland. As one of the foremost experts on the history of Auschwitz, Dr. Wontor-Cichy will deliver a compelling keynote presentation exploring the stark differences in the daily lives of prisoners—shaped by ethnicity, religion and work assignments—within the largest Nazi German concentration and extermination camp during World War II. For previous events, guest speaker Hailey Sharon Dilman from Yad Vashem, discussed the UN's definition of genocide, provided a framework (process) of creating a genocide and gave examples of genocides around the world through time.