Moral report of the institution
EDITORIAL
Éric de Rothschild © DR.
Dear friends,
You will discover the summary of our main events and actions in 2023, a year rich in activities, exhibitions, meetings and training. In 2022, the Memorial had regained the level of attendance before Covid; in 2023, more than 543,000 people participated in our activities in France.
In particular, we have received more than 140,000 students in all our museums and schools. We have trained nearly 8,000 professionals to help them teach the history of the Holocaust and genocides, while showing the mechanisms of racism, antisemitism and hatred that are the breeding ground.
The year that has passed since the inauguration of the station in Pithiviers has allowed nearly 10,000 visitors to discover this new place of teaching and education. 2023 was also marked by the 80th anniversary of the creation of the Center for Contemporary Jewish Documentation in April 1943 in Grenoble, by Isaac Schneersohn. A magnificent podcast narrates the wonderful epic of the creation of the CDJC which finally gave birth to the Shoah Memorial.
And it was still in 2023 that the Memorial created, within its own institution, a digital platform bringing together all of our archival collections on the history of genocides, that of the Armenians in the Ottoman Empire, of the Tutsi in Rwanda, as well as that of the Herero and the Nama in Namibia.
Indeed, the Shoah Memorial seized the opportunity of the visit in June 2023 to Paris of Jean Damascène Bizimana, Minister of National Unity and Civic Engagement of the Republic of Rwanda, and Philibert Gakwenzire, president of Ibuka Rwanda, to inaugurate the Raphael Lemkin Center on Genocides.
Among the main exhibitions of the year 2023, the one presenting the drawings by Riss from the Papon trial or the one about the photographer and resistance fighter Julia Pirotte, which met a large audience. In Drancy, it is the exhibition on Ginette Kolinka that has been able to bring together schools and individual audiences. At the Lieu de Mémoire in Chambon-sur-Lignon, the exhibition of Cabu’s drawings on the Vel d'Hiv roundup attracted nearly 13,000 visitors.
This year will have been marked by the in-person celebration of the commemorations and the reading of the names of the deportees from the year 1943.
We wanted to commemorate the 80th anniversary of the Warsaw ghetto revolt and the heroism of these young people who stood up for several weeks against the powerful German army.
Finally, as part of its educational mission, the Shoah Memorial has developed its presence on social networks in order to disseminate historical knowledge and counter disinformation and other falsifications of history.
Financially, you will notice that this year 2023 was marked by an increase in charges in an inflationary context. The Memorial needs to find new funding in order to consolidate and support the development of its activities.
Yet, faced with the sharp increase in antisemitic acts in France since October 7, 2023, the action of the Memorial proves more necessary than ever, not only in order to educate against antisemitism, but also in order to deconstruct amalgams, the stereotypes and restore meaning to misguided and instrumentalized words.
Far from giving up or succumbing to pessimism, the Memorial energetically leads "the battle of education".
Éric de Rothschild
President of the Shoah Memorial
MORAL REPORT 2023 IN FRENCH
MORAL REPORT 2023 IN ENGLISH
ARCHIVES OF MORAL REPORTS SINCE 2004
