Global screening event of “Who Will Write Our History” on the occasion of the International Day of Commemoration in Memory of the Victims of the Holocaust

On the occasion of International Day of Commemoration in Memory of the Victims of the Holocaust, UNESCO will screen the feature documentary “Who Will Write Our History” by Roberta Grossman and Nancy Spielberg. The event will take place at UNESCO Headquarters and will be broadcasted at parallel events around the world.

27 January marks the anniversary of the liberation of the Nazi German Concentration and Extermination Camp of Auschwitz-Birkenau by Soviet troops in 1945. In 2005, it was officially proclaimed International Day of Commemoration in Memory of the Victims of the Holocaust by the United Nations General Assembly.

To mark this day, UNESCO will host a global screening event of the feature documentary “Who Will Write Our History”. The film is the first feature documentary about the clandestine group Oyneg Shabes, which was formed in November 1940 in the Warsaw Ghetto under the leadership of historian Emanuel Ringelblum. Between 1940-43, the group collected thousands of testimonies from the Warsaw Ghetto, creating a documentary record of the wartime fate of Polish Jewry. The “Ringelblum archives” were included in the UNESCO Memory of the World Register in 1999.

The event will take place in presence of UNESCO Director General Audrey Azoulay, the President of the Shoah Memorial Éric de Rothschild, the film director Roberta Grossman, and the producer Nancy Spielberg. The screening will be framed by a ceremony in memory of the victims of the Holocaust and a panel discussion with members of the film crew, moderated by Stephen Smith, UNESCO Chair for Genocide Education.

The film will be shown in over 300 venues and museums around the world on 27 January 2019 and the opening remarks and post screening discussion will be streamed via Facebook LIVE from UNESCO.

The event is organized in cooperation with Katahdin Foundation, the Shoah Memorial, ARTE, NDR and Abramorama with the support of SNCF and the Permanent Delegation of Canada to UNESCO. The World Jewish Congress is a communication partner through the #WeRemember social media campaign.

The 27 January 2019 global event screening partners include the World Jewish Congress, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Museum of Tolerance, USC Shoah Foundation, State Museum Auschwitz-Birkenau, Jewish Historical Institute, One Szabat Program, Association of the Jewish Historical Institute of Poland, YIVO Institute for Jewish Research and the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee.