#LightsAgainstDarkness - Nationwide event on Holocaust Remembrance Day 27 January 2023

#LightsAgainst Darkness - Nationwide initiative for Holocaust Remembrance Day on 27 January 2023

For more than 25 years, 27 January, the day the Red Army liberated the concentration and extermination camp Auschwitz in 1945, has been the official Holocaust Remembrance Day in Germany. On this day, we commemorate all people who were victims of National Socialist crimes.

Memorial and educational sites, museums, documentation centres and remembrance initiatives on the history of National Socialist crimes from all over Germany commemorate the historical events on this day of remembrance and illuminate local sites of remembrance after dark.

The Documentation Centre for Displacement, Expulsion, Reconciliation is taking part in this action on 27 January, setting a sign against nationalism, racism, anti-Semitism, anti-gypsyism and any group-related hostility towards people.

Our house is located in the middle of a neighbourhood of historically significant places of remembrance of recent German history. Diagonally opposite is the ruin of the Anhalter Bahnhof, where almost 10,000 Berlin Jews were deported to the Theresienstadt concentration camp in 1942. In the next few years, the Exile Museum will also be built there. Nearby is the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe. The Topography of Terror is in the immediate vicinity. From 1933 to 1945, the most important institutions of National Socialist terror responsible for crimes throughout Europe were located there.

Our light installation on January 27 ties in with the origins of the Europahaus complex, to which the documentation center belongs. In the 1920s, nightlife pulsated here on Askanischer Platz. The building was famous for its neon signs that lit up the night sky.

We are borrowing from these neon signs for the #Lights Against Darkness initative, our windows our windows have yellow lettering #LightsAgainstDarkness to draw attention to the day of remembrance. In order to reflect the diversity and (colourfulness) of our society, which opposes the exclusionary National Socialist image of man, and to point out that this year's Day of Remembrance is especially dedicated to those people who were persecuted and murdered because of their sexual orientation and gender identity, the Documentation Centre for Displacement, Expulsion, Reconciliation lights up colourfully on 27 January.