Videos

The exhibition "Between Life and Death. Stories of Rescue during the Holocaust" is now on display at the Pilecki Institute in New York City (25 August–29 October 2026).

The exhibition tells the stories of people from fifteen European countries who risked their lives to save persecuted Jews during the Second World War, rescuers and survivors alike, placing each story in the local historical context that shaped both the chance to help and the chance to survive.

This short reportage takes you inside the exhibition's opening in New York.

"Between Life and Death" is a travelling exhibition created by the European Network Remembrance and Solidarity (ENRS), the POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews, and the Silent Heroes Memorial Centre.
Since its debut in Brussels in 2018, it has travelled to cities across Europe and Japan, including Amsterdam, Vilnius, Budapest, Bucharest, Dublin, and Osaka.

More information about the exhibition: enrs.eu/between-life-and-death

On 9 September 2026, scholars and educators from Europe, Israel, and the United States gathered at the Pilecki Institute in New York for a seminar on how Holocaust remembrance changes across generations and societies.

Speakers Prof. Daniel Blatman (Israel), Prof. Rune Christiansen (Denmark), Prof. Stephan Lehnstaedt (Germany), Dr. Richard Quinlan (USA), and Prof. Piotr Trojański (Poland) discussed how historical experience, political and social context, public debate, and shifting educational priorities shape the ways the Holocaust is taught and remembered and the challenges educators face working across different national and cultural contexts.

The seminar accompanied the New York presentation of the exhibition "Between Life and Death. Stories of Rescue during the Holocaust", a travelling exhibition prepared by the European Network Remembrance and Solidarity (ENRS) in cooperation with the POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews and the Silent Heroes Memorial Centre, in partnership with the Pilecki Institute New York.

More information about the exhibition: enrs.eu/between-life-and-death

On 10 September 2026, Holocaust survivor Eva Paddock shared her story in conversation at the Pilecki Institute in New York.

At just three and a half years old, Eva escaped German-Nazi-occupied Europe through the Kindertransport. In July 1939, she and her sister were among the children sent from Prague to safety in England on one of the last Czech Kindertransport trains organised by Sir Nicholas Winton.

In this conversation and Q&A, Eva speaks about rescue, resilience, and rebuilding her life in a new country and, drawing on her long career as a teacher and headteacher, reflects on approaching Holocaust education with care, sensitivity, and clarity.

The conversation accompanied the New York presentation of the exhibition ‘Between Life and Death. Stories of Rescue during the Holocaust’, organised by ENRS, the POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews, and the Silent Heroes Memorial Centre, in partnership with the Pilecki Institute New York.

More information about the exhibition: enrs.eu/between-life-and-death

On 10 September 2026, Dan Wolf, Artistic Director of ‘Sound in the Silence’, presented the programme at the Pilecki Institute in New York.

The presentation accompanied the New York run of the exhibition ‘Between Life and Death. Stories of Rescue during the Holocaust’.

‘Sound in the Silence’ is an intercultural remembrance project for young people, organized by the European Network Remembrance and Solidarity (ENRS). At historically significant sites, students work alongside artists from different disciplines to explore how the past connects to questions they face in the present, and to find their own ways of understanding and expressing that history.

Dan Wolf is a hip-hop artist working across rap, theatre, and personal narrative. Drawing on years of experience with the acclaimed hip-hop music and theatre collective Felonious, he uses art as a way to engage history and prompt reflection in the present moment.

More information about the exhibition: enrs.eu/between-life-and-death

Stefania Perzanowska (1896 – 1974) was a Polish physician and Home Army resistance member who, after her arrest by the Gestapo, was deported to the Nazi German concentration camp Majdanek in 1943.

There, with no equipment, medicine or sanitation, she organised a hospital for female prisoners, insisting on treating every patient, regardless of nationality or chance of survival, as someone entitled to care. Refusing to hand over patients for selection, she built one of the most extensively documented instances of medical resistance within a Nazi German concentration camp. After the war she resumed medical practice and, in 1970, published her memoir dedicated to the colleagues who worked alongside her.

Remember her.

Every year on 23 August, the European Day of Remembrance for Victims of Totalitarian Regimes, the ENRS recalls those persecuted in the name of totalitarian and authoritarian ideologies.

Learn more at enrs.eu/august23

Recording of the Opening Speeches of the 14th European Remembrance Symposium, held on 27 May 2026 at the Moyzes Hall, Comenius University, Bratislava, Slovakia.

The 14th European Remembrance Symposium, organised by the European Network of Remembrance and Solidarity and the Nation's Memory Institute (ÚPN), brought together historians, educators, cultural professionals, and policymakers in Bratislava to address the theme of Memory Wars: Facts, Disinformation and the Politics of Remembrance. Over three days, participants examined the antagonistic potential of collective memory, the mechanisms through which history is weaponised in contexts of contemporary conflict, and the question of whether Europe is capable of forming a unified response to the challenges it faces today.

The symposium gathered scholars and practitioners from across Europe and beyond to foster international dialogue around memory, disinformation, and democratic resilience.

Learn more about the 2026 even here.

Recording of the Keynote Speech delivered by Prof. Catherine Horel, Research Director at CNRS/CETOBaC, Paris, and President of the International Committee for Historical Sciences, at the 14th European Remembrance Symposium, held on 27 May 2026 in Bratislava, Slovakia.

The 14th European Remembrance Symposium, organised by the European Network of Remembrance and Solidarity and the Nation's Memory Institute (ÚPN), brought together historians, educators, cultural professionals, and policymakers to address the theme of Memory Wars: Facts, Disinformation and the Politics of Remembrance. Over three days, participants examined how collective memory shapes group and national identities, how it is weaponised in the context of contemporary conflict — including hybrid warfare conducted by the Russian Federation — and what role divergent historical experiences play in dividing or uniting European societies today.

Learn more about the 2026 even here.

Recording of the Opening Panel: Memory – Power – Conflict, moderated by Prof. Jay Winter (Yale University, USA), with contributions from Prof. Dovilė Budrytė (Georgia Gwinnett College / Vytautas Magnus University), Prof. Tuomas Forsberg (Tampere University), Prof. Catherine Horel (International Committee for Historical Sciences), Prof. Ruxandra Ivan (University of Bucharest), and Prof. Arkady Rzegocki (Jagiellonian University).

The 14th European Remembrance Symposium, organised by the European Network of Remembrance and Solidarity and the Nation's Memory Institute (ÚPN), convened in Bratislava in May 2026 under the theme Memory Wars: Facts, Disinformation and the Politics of Remembrance. This opening panel addressed memory as a tool for creating conflict and examined the geopolitics of memory: What role does historical memory play in today's political tensions? How do specific historical circumstances influence the weaponisation and manipulation of the past? And are memory conflicts the specialty of post-authoritarian Eastern Europe, or are they inherent to all democracies?

The symposium gathered scholars, educators, and cultural professionals from across Europe to explore the mechanisms through which memory is deployed as an instrument of power — and to consider how Europe might respond with unity and democratic resilience.

Learn more about the 2026 even here.

Recording of the Turbo Presentations session held on 27 May 2026 at the 14th European Remembrance Symposium, Bratislava, Slovakia.

During the Turbo Presentations, participants from organisations and projects across Europe presented their work to the symposium audience, each in up to 120 seconds. The presentations were connected to the symposium's overarching theme of Memory Wars: Facts, Disinformation and the Politics of Remembrance, reflecting the diverse range of institutions and initiatives engaged in the fields of historical memory, education, and democratic resilience.

The 14th European Remembrance Symposium was organised by the European Network of Remembrance and Solidarity and the Nation's Memory Institute (ÚPN), and brought together historians, educators, cultural professionals, and policymakers to examine how collective memory is shaped, contested, and weaponised in contemporary Europe.

Learn more about the 2026 even here.

Recording of the Case Studies session held on 28 May 2026 at the 14th European Remembrance Symposium, Bratislava, Slovakia.

The session was moderated by Joanna Orłoś (European Network of Remembrance and Solidarity) and featured presentations by Iratxe Momoitio Astorkia (Gernika Peace Museum, Spain), Cecilia Badano (LRE Foundation), Dr Lukáš Holata (Institute for the Study of Totalitarian Regimes, Czech Republic), Dr Olha Mukha (Territory of Terror Museum, Lviv / Resilience & Reconstruction, London), Dr Pavol Hardoš (Comenius University in Bratislava), and Sebastian Zilm (Robert Havemann Society, Germany).

The 14th European Remembrance Symposium, organised by the European Network of Remembrance and Solidarity and the Nation's Memory Institute (ÚPN), gathered scholars and memory professionals from across Europe under the theme Memory Wars: Facts, Disinformation and the Politics of Remembrance. The Case Studies session brought together institutional perspectives from Spain, Italy, the Czech Republic, Ukraine, Slovakia, and Germany, illustrating the diverse ways in which memory institutions engage with disinformation, totalitarian legacies, and the challenge of reaching contemporary audiences.

Learn more about the 2026 even here.

Recording of the Panel Discussion: Dissonances of Memory: Europe United or Divided?, moderated by Pavol Demeš (former Minister of Foreign Affairs, Slovakia), with contributions from Prof. Mark Bassin (Södertörn University, Stockholm), Dr Georgi Georgiev (Institute for Human Sciences / Central European University, Vienna), Prof. Dr Heidi Hein-Kircher (Martin Opitz Library Herne / Ruhr University Bochum), Dr Borbála Klacsmann (Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest), and Prof. Andrzej Nowak (Jagiellonian University, Cracow).

The 14th European Remembrance Symposium, organised by the European Network of Remembrance and Solidarity and the Nation's Memory Institute (ÚPN), convened in Bratislava in May 2026 under the theme Memory Wars: Facts, Disinformation and the Politics of Remembrance. This closing panel examined the question of European memory unity and division: eighty years after the Second World War and more than three decades since the end of the Cold War, do shared European frameworks of historical memory exist — or do divergent national experiences of totalitarian rule, occupation, genocide, and imperialism continue to fracture the continent? In the face of the military threat posed by Russia, is Europe capable of a unified historical and political response?

The symposium gathered historians, diplomats, educators, and cultural professionals to foster dialogue around memory, democratic resilience, and the politics of the past in contemporary Europe.

Learn more about the 2026 even here.

Recording of the Closing Remarks of the 14th European Remembrance Symposium, delivered on 29 May 2026 at Moyzes Hall, Comenius University, Bratislava, Slovakia.

The 14th European Remembrance Symposium, organised by the European Network of Remembrance and Solidarity and the Nation's Memory Institute (ÚPN), brought together historians, educators, cultural professionals, and policymakers over three days in Bratislava to address the theme of Memory Wars: Facts, Disinformation and the Politics of Remembrance. The Closing Remarks offered a reflection on the symposium's key discussions — from the geopolitics of memory and the weaponisation of the past to the question of whether Europe can form a unified response to contemporary memory conflicts and the challenges of disinformation.

Learn more about the 2026 even here.

Radio documentary
Title: 'Seeds of Fate'
Authors: Michał Zaręba and Robert Duliński (Poland)


To watch the video with English subtitles, click “Watch on YouTube.”

In November 1944, in the village of Wilcze Kąty near Sierpc, Poland, Józef Olszewski and his daughter Janina were executed by the Nazis for sheltering escaped British prisoners of war. According to local accounts, they may have been betrayed by a neighbour.

More than eighty years later, reporters Michał Zaręba and Robert Duliński from Radio PiK return to the region to uncover the story behind this wartime tragedy. Through conversations with local families and witnesses, they reveal a powerful story of courage, memory, solidarity and forgiveness.

Seeds of Fate is an investigative radio documentary exploring how history survives through oral testimony and family memory, and how the moral choices of ordinary people continue to resonate across generations.

Originally broadcast on Radio Pik, this radio documentary received an Honourable Mention in the “Grand Stories: History Through Journalism” awards for its exploration of local oral history and its vivid portrayal of individual moral dilemmas during wartime.

"Between Life and Death. Stories of Rescue during the Holocaust" — a short reportage from the opening of the travelling exhibition at the United Nations Headquarters in New York, where it was presented for the first time in North America (15 January – 20 February 2026).

The opening ceremony brought together distinguished speakers, including Melissa Fleming (UN Under-Secretary-General for Global Communications), Chaloka Beyani (UN Special Advisor on the Prevention of Genocide), H.E. Krzysztof Maria Szczerski (Permanent Representative of Poland to the UN), Marta Cienkowska (Minister of Culture and National Heritage of Poland), Holocaust survivor Elżbieta Ficowska, and other representatives of partner institutions.

The exhibition was displayed as part of The Holocaust and the United Nations Outreach Programme’s activities marking the International Day of Commemoration in memory of the victims of the Holocaust.

The exhibition was prepared in cooperation with Muzeum Historii Żydów Polskich POLIN (Museum of the History of Polish Jews) and Silent Heroes Memorial Center, pays tribute to those who risked their lives to help persecuted Jews during World War II, presenting stories from over thirteen European countries and highlighting the experiences of both rescuers and survivors.

Eva Paddock and Milena Grenfell-Baines (née Fleischmann) are two Jewish sisters who lived in Prague. On 31 July 1939, they left the city on the last train organised by Nicholas Winton as part of the Kindertransport initiative to Great Britain. The journey saved their lives, sparing them the fate of hundreds of thousands of Jews who perished in the Holocaust. In this interview, given in Dublin on 26 January 2026, they tell us about the journey and their first year in Great Britain, as well as about the impact these events had on their lives.

Facts Not Fiction Serbia is part of the international Facts Not Fiction initiative, launched by EuroClio in cooperation with partners from Finland, Germany, Romania, and Serbia, including Arolsen Archives, Terraforming, and the Institute Cultural from Timișoara. The project focuses on researching and presenting local histories of individuals and groups persecuted by the Nazis and their collaborators, with the aim of making these histories accessible and relevant to contemporary audiences.

The Serbian team, composed of teachers and students, concentrated on uncovering the stories of former pupils from Belgrade whose education and lives were disrupted during the Second World War. Through extensive archival research, collaboration with museums and institutions, and engagement with primary historical sources, participants reconstructed lesser-known personal histories and brought them into public awareness.

The project resulted in a series of multimedia outputs, including films, podcasts, and creative formats such as graphic narratives. Among the key works are the films “40 Names”, dedicated to students of the Third Belgrade Grammar School, and “Notes from the Margins, 1942”, focusing on students of the Fourteenth Belgrade Grammar School.

By combining rigorous historical research with contemporary storytelling approaches, Facts Not Fiction Serbia demonstrates how complex and sensitive histories can be communicated responsibly in the 21st century. The project highlights the importance of distinguishing fact from fiction while fostering critical thinking and historical awareness among younger generations.

For its quality, creativity, and the active involvement of young participants, the Serbian team was awarded an Honourable Mention in the ENRS Journalism Award.

Producer: Martina Krivokapic

Project coordinators: Maja Keskinov, Zorana Matićević

The short film ‘Righteous Diplomacy’ is dedicated to Chiune Sugihara and other diplomats who played an important role in saving thousands of Jews during the Second World War. Acting individually, or in international clandestine networks, the diplomats defied the occupiers, and sometimes even their own governments, by allowing threatened Jews to flee to third-party countries. Such was the case of Chiune Sugihara, the Japanese vice-consul in Kaunas, Lithuania. In the six weeks preceding the closure of the Japanese consulate, in September 1940, Sugihara supplied thousands of Jews with transit visas to Japan — despite the fact that his country was an ally of Nazi Germany. He might have saved up to 6,000 Jews, although the exact number is unknown. His activities were made public in 1968 by one of those whom he had saved. As a result, in 1984, he was recognized as “Righteous Among the Nations” by the World Holocaust Remembrance Center Yad Vashem, in Jerusalem. He is the only Japanese person, and one of around forty diplomats, to hold this honorary title.

'Righteous Diplomacy' short film is a part of educational package presenting biographies of the diplomats featured in the exhibition “Between Life and Death”:

Learn more about other educational materials: hi-storylessons.eu

Elżbieta Ficowska was born in Warsaw ghetto in 1942 to Henia and Jossel Koppel. She survived because she was smuggled to the "Aryan side" and hid from Germans by Stanisława Bussold – a 56-year-old midwife and member of the underground helping Jews. The only thing left from her Jewish parents is a little silver spoon bearing the girl's name and birth date. Her story is among those presented at the traveling exhibition "Between Life and Death".