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Auschwitz, liberated on 27 January 1945 by Soviet troops, symbolises in collective memory the unspeakable crimes committed in the death camps, the culmination of the extermination strategy implemented throughout Europe by Nazism. Only with the gradual liberation of the camps by the Allied forces, from July 1944 until the end of the war in May 1945, did humanity begin to realise the magnitude and horror of the mass murder that occurred there. The systematic displacement and industrially organized extermination of, first and foremost, the Jews, but also of the Roma and Sinti, religious minorities, homosexuals, communists, socialists and other political opponents, as well as of every human being whom the National Socialists deemed inferior and unworthy of life, has left a deep historical imprint that concerns us all.

On the occasion of the 80th anniversary of the end of the Nazi atrocities and the end of the war in Europe, a series of events is planned to preserve the memory and to explore the significance of this collective trauma for the present and the future. The initiative involves academics, researchers, intellectuals and artists under the auspices of academic institutions from all over Greece.

Given that in Greece the Shoah and the systematic extermination of minorities, resistance fighters, prisoners of war and civilians took on great dimensions, remembrance of them should be inscribed in the pan-European memory of the death camps. The multifaceted nature of the anniversary requires a historically comprehensive and systematic examination, all the more important since several ideological perceptions that paved the way for the catastrophe have returned to the forefront.

The events aim to reach out widely and achieve the greatest possible publicity, since this is a trauma that concerns society in its entirety. They will not be limited to Thessaloniki, which occupies a tragically emblematic place in the history of the Holocaust, nor to Athens, but will be organised in many cities, in Ioannina, Patras, Volos, Chania, Corfu and Rhodes. Using archival material, testimonies, historical and literary texts and with lectures, workshops, discussions, theatrical events and artworks, the participants will be invited to contribute to the evaluation of the historical past from a contemporary perspective and to the utilization of its legacy for the future. The main concern is to enshrine and disseminate the memory of the 80th anniversary of the liberation of the concentration camps in public discourse.

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Rika Benveniste

Department of History, Archaeology and Social Anthropology, University of Thessaly

Katerina Karakassi

Department of German Language and Literature, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens

Dimitris Karydas

Department of Sociology, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens

Gerassimos Kouzelis

Department of Political Science and Public Administration, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens

Marilisa Mitsou

CRH, École des Hautes Études en sciences sociales, Paris

Yannis Papatheodorou

Department of Philology, University of Patras

Konstantinos Rantis

Department of Philosophy, University of Ioannina

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Athens

National and Kapodistrian University of Athens

Department of German Language and Literature

Department of Sociology

Institute of Greek Politics, Department of Political Science and Public Administration

MA in Political Science and Sociology of the Department of Political Science and Public Administration

Thessaloniki

Aristotle University of Thessaloniki

Department of German Language and Literature

School of Drama

Patras

University of Patras

Institute of Archival Documents and Press, Department of Philology

Ioannina

University of Ioannina

Department of Philolosophy

Laboratory for the Documentation and Study of the History of Social and Political Ideas, Department of Philolosophy

Volos

University of Thessaly

Department of History, Archaeology and Social Anthropology

Corfu

Ionian University

History Department

Crete

University of Crete

Human Rights Center, Department of Political Science

Rhodes

University of the Aegean

History and Social Sciences Laboratory,

Pedagogical Department of Primary Education

Mytilene

University of the Aegean

Department of Social Anthropology and History

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Participants: professors, authors and artists

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Participants: professors, authors and artists

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Artemis Alcalay

Visual artist

Minas I. Alexiadis

Prof., Department of Music Studies, NKUA

Menelaos Charalambides

Historian

Ada Dialla

Prof., Department of Theory and History of Art, School of Fine Arts Athens

Stratos Dordanas

Assoc. Prof., Department of History and Archaeology, AUTh

Hagen Fleischer

Prof. emeritus, Department of History and Archaeology, NKUA

Maria Gavala

Author, film director, screenplay writer

Maria Mamaliga

Author

Ulrich Moennig

Prof., Department of Modern Greek Language, University of Hamburg

Rena Mohlo

Historian

Vasilios Ritzaleos

Historian, Department of Languages, Literature and Culture of the Black Sea Countries, Democritus University of Thrace

Xenis Sachinis

Prof. emeritus, Department of Visual and Applied Arts, AUTh

Jannis Stiggas

Author

Samis Taboh

Visual artist

Evanthia Tsantila

Visual artist

Odette Varon – Vassard

Historian and translator

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Austrian embassy in Athens

CeMoG (Centrum Modernes Griechenland – FU Berlin)

General State Archives – Archives of Epirus

German embassy in Athens

Goethe Institute of Athens

Greek Film Archive

New York University – Department of Greek Studies Alexandros S. Onassis in Athens (NYU in Athens)

OPANDA: Agency for Culture, Sports and Youth of the Municipality of Athens

Signal - Researching and Confronting the Far Right

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The logo of the activities is a work of Sami Taboch. It is a collage, entitled The duty of memory, created in 2002, on pre-colored acrylic paper, measuring 40x40 cm.

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80years.auschwitz[@]gmail.com

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For greek please click hier!