A ‘virtual tour’ of Holocaust memorials on Holocaust Memorial Day, a reminder that we must never forget

‘Arbeit macht frei’ … the gate at Auschwitz … today is Holocaust Memorial Day (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

Today is Holocaust Memorial Day, marking the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz in 1945 and the beginning of the liberation of the concentration camps in Europe.

In a ‘virtual tour’ today, I visit Holocaust memorials in a dozen European countries: Austria, Czech Republic, England, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Poland, Slovakia and Slovenia.

Looking back on many visits over the years, my images today include monuments, memorials, plaques, sculptures, shattered grave stones and Stolpersteine or ‘stumbling stones’, in cemeteries, libraries, museums, parks, schools, squares, streets, synagogues, railway stations, and bridges.

There are photographs from the concentration camps in Auschwitz, Birkenau and Sachsenhausen. There are Jewish families and individuals, mothers and children, the murdered and the survivors, resistance fighters and the ‘Righteous Among the Nations’.

Austria:

Rachel Whiteread’s Holocaust Memorial in Judenplatz in Vienna (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Czech Republic:

The walls of the Pinkas Synagogue in Prague are covered with the names of 78,000 victims of the Holocaust (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

The names of the concentration camps surround the Aron haKodesh or Holy Ark in the Pinkas Synagogue, Prague (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

England:

The Holocaust Memorial Stone at the east end of Bourton Park, Buckingham, was installed in 2021 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

France:

The Mur des Names or Wall of Names in the Mémorial de la Shoah lists 76,000 French Jews deported and murdered by the Nazis (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

A plaque on a school in the Marais in Paris recalling the children of the Shoah (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Germany:

The Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe in Berlin (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

A memorial to Jewish children at the Jewish Cemetery in Berlin (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

The memorial to the victims of the Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp 1936-1945 … the victims included gays, Gypsies, political prisoners and disabled people (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Greece:

The Jewish Holocaust Memorial at Plateia Eleftherias (Liberty Square) in Thessaloniki (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Chief Rabbi Gabriel Negrin places candles in the Holocaust memorial in Etz Hayyim Synagogue in Chania (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

The Holocaust Memorial by Georgios Karahalios (2001) in Corfu remembers the 2,000 Jews of Corfu who were murdered in Auschwitz in 1944 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

The monument in the Nuova or New Synagogue in Corfu to families who died in the Holocaust (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Hungary:

The Memorial of the Hungarian Jewish Martyrs by Imre Varga at the Dohány Street Synagogue in Budapest (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

The Holocaust Memorial Park at the Dohány Street Synagogue in Budapest (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Italy:

A monument in Bologna commemorating victims of the Holocaust (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

The Holocaust Memorial outside the railway station in Gorizia, a town that straddles the border of Italy and Slovenia (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

The Holocaust Memorial at the Synagogue in Padua (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

A monument to Jewish partisans and resistance to the Nazis and Fascists in Rome (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

The memorial wall to victims of the Holocaust in the Ghetto in Venice (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

The Holocaust memorial in the Ghetto in Venice (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Poland:

Multilingual memorials in Birkenau … a reminder of the many nationalities of the victims of the Holocaust (Photographs: Patrick Comerford)

Shattered gravestones make a Holocaust memorial in a Jewish cemetery in Kraków (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

The Empty Chairs Memorial in Ghetto Heroes Square in Kazimierz , symbolising abandoned homes and mass deportations from the Kraków Ghetto in 1943 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Slovakia:

The Holocaust Memorial in the centre of Bratislava on the site of the former Neolog Synagogue (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Stolpersteine or ‘stumbling stones’

Berlin:

Stolpersteine or Stumbling stones on Rosenthaler Straße 39, Berlin-Mitte, remembering members of the Salinger family murdered by the Nazis in Auschwtiz and Riga (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Dublin:

Dublin’s first Stolpersteine or ‘stumbling stones’, recalling six Irish Holocaust victims, at Saint Catherine’s National School on Donore Avenue (photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Prague:

‘Stolpersteine’ or ‘Stumbling Stones’ on the streets of Prague remember members of the Bergmann family deported to Terezín during the Holocaust (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Thessaloniki:

‘Stolpersteine’ or ‘Stumbling Stones’ on the pavement on Vassilisis Olgas Avenue in Thessaloniki commemorate Greek Jews deported to Auschwitz (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Venice:

Stolpersteine or stumbling stones (Pietre d’inciampo) in Venice recall victims of the Holocaust (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Remembering individuals:

Remembering Anne Frank in street art in Berlin (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

The sculpture of Anne Frank by Doreen Kern in the British Library, London (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

The Kindertransport monument at Liverpool Street Station … a reminder in the heart of London of the Holocaust (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

A plaque on Heydukova Street in Bratislava marks the former home of Aron Grünhut (1895-1974), involved in heroic rescues during the Holocaust (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Monuments to ‘Righteous Among the Nations’:

Philip Jackson’s monument of the Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg at Wallenberg Place, near Hyde Park, London (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

A memorial to Raoul Wallenberg in the Raoul Wallenberg Holocaust Memorial Park at the Dohány Street Synagogue, Budapest (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

The Mary Elmes Bridge in Cork … the centrepiece of the bridge is designed to look like a menorah (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

The Wall of the Righteous in Paris lists 3,300 French people who have been recognised as ‘Righteous Among the Nations’ (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

These images are reminders not only of the Holocaust and its victims, but of real individuals who suffered and were humiliated, whose lives were shattered and who were murdered.

They are reminders of why we must never forget. The Holocaust happened not just because of one evil man but because many good people stood by and remained silent.

Over 80 years after the end of the Holocaust, antisemitism is on the rise once again. We are seeing the rise of the far-right in Britain across Europe and a resurgence of the far-right in Latin America, far-right ideology and vocabulary has become part and parcel of the language of the Trump regime, its spokespersons and those who support street murders by ICE in Minneapolis.

We must never forget.

The Eternal Flame in the Mémorial de la Shoah, Paris (Patrick Comerford)