Neshama: When European youth take up the torch of memory news

Around 27 January, the International Day of Remembrance for the Victims of the Shoah, the first meeting of the young European ambassadors of the memory of the Shoah was held in the framework of the Neshama project.

This event extended several months of preparation and exchanges during virtual meetings.

From 25 to 28 January, in Paris, Drancy and Bobigny, young Europeans from five countries gathered around a common commitment: to transmit and bring alive the memory of the Shoah and Jewish life in Europe.

Coordinated by the Shoah Memorial, with the support of the European Commission, Neshama is based on a consortium of eight partner institutions:

Germany: Memorial of the Langenstein-Zwieberge concentration camp
Croatia: Jasenovac Memorial & Ministry of Science, Education and Youth
France: Memorial of the Shoah & Memorial of the Martyrs of Deportation
Greece: Jewish Museum of Greece & Ministry of Education and Religious Affairs
Poland: Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum

The Neshama meeting in Paris brought together 250 students, teachers and partners, with the support of the German Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

The program included many highlights: presentation by the young ambassadors of the history of the Shoah in their country through that of their place of memory, journey on the traces of Jewish life in Paris and the Shoah, European reflection on the resistance of Jewish women against the Shoah proposed by professor Lisa Pine, but also the poignant testimony of Arlette Testyler, a Holocaust survivor.

The Neshama meeting also allowed the young ambassadors to take part in official ceremonies on 27 January. It ended on the 28th at the Paris City Hall with the interventions of Laurence Patrice, deputy mayor of Paris, Jacques Fredj, director of the Shoah Memorial, and Pascale Falek, political advisor to the European coordinator for the fight against antisemitism and support for Jewish life in Europe, and in the presence of Gudrun Lingner, chargé d'affaires at the German embassy in Paris, and Lada Muraj, first secretary of the Croatian embassy in France.