15 January – 20 February 2026
United Nations Headquarters, New York
405 E 45th St, New York, NY 10017

Thursday Jan 29, 2026 at 6:00 PM
YIVO Institute for Jewish Research
15 W 16th St #6301, New York, NY 10011
Panel Discussion in person and on zoom
Admission is free, registration is required. Note the Zoom livestream will begin at 7:00 PM

6:00 PM: Reception
7:00 PM: Program

The European Network Remembrance and Solidarity (ENRS) will present the exhibition Between Life and Death. Stories of Rescue during the Holocaust at the headquarters of the United Nations in New York, with the support of the Permanent Mission of Poland to the United Nations. The exhibition is part of programme organized by the Holocaust and the United Nations Outreach Programme to mark the International Day of Commemoration in memory of the victims of the Holocaust. The official opening of the exhibition will take place on 28 January at 6:00 p.m. On 29 January at 6:00 p.m., we invite you to a reception followed at 7 p.m. by a panel discussion titled “Holocaust Remembrance Today – A Living Responsibility” at the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research and the Center for Jewish History, organized in partnership with the Sousa Mendes Foundation, and as part of the program of the Holocaust and the United Nations Outreach Programme. The panel comprises Holocaust survivor Elżbieta Ficowska and historians Jay Winter, Mordecai Paldiel and Daniel Blatman. Jayashri Wyatt, United Nations Education Outreach Section, moderates.

A panel will explore how societies remember and reinterpret the Holocaust in the 21st century, and what meaning International Holocaust Remembrance Day holds today. Inspired by the European Network Remembrance and Solidarity (ENRS) exhibition Between Life and Death: Stories of Rescue during the Holocaust, on view at the United Nations from January 15 to February 20 as part of remembrance and education outreach organized by the Holocaust and the United Nations Outreach Programme, the discussion will focus on acts of rescue, individual moral choices, and the legacy of human solidarity during one of the darkest periods in history.

Moderated by Jayashri Wyatt, the panel comprising Elżbieta Ficowska, Mordecai Paldiel, Jay Winter (Charles J. Stille Professor of History Emeritus at Yale University), and Daniel Blatman (Max and Rita Haber Professor Emeritus of Contemporary Jewry and Holocaust Studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem) will discuss how remembrance has evolved over the decades, how stories of rescuers and survivors can be communicated to younger generations, and how to respond to new challenges such as disinformation and the rapid development of AI, as well as the fading of living memory. The conversation will highlight why remembrance remains essential for shaping empathy, civic responsibility, and resilience in today’s world.

About the Exhibition

Risking one’s own life to save another person is one of the most extraordinary acts of courage. The exhibition Between Life and Death. Stories of Rescue during the Holocaust pays tribute to those who, during the Second World War – despite the threat of imprisonment, deportation, or death – chose to help persecuted Jews. By combining the stories of rescuers and survivors, the exhibition shows the complexity of human relations under the extreme and varied circumstances of the war, placing each story within a broader historical context. This approach allows visitors to better understand the local conditions that shaped the possibilities for survival and assistance. One of the aims is to demonstrate that decisions to help, taken for example in Warsaw and in Paris, were fundamentally different in nature.

The exhibition presents stories of rescuing Jews from thirteen European countries (Croatia, Denmark, France, Germany, Hungary, Lithuania, the Netherlands, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, Ukraine, Italy, and Estonia), highlighting the experiences of both rescuers and survivors. One of the panels is dedicated to diplomats from Poland, Japan, the United Kingdom, Portugal, Switzerland, Sweden, and Denmark, who were active in Germany, France, Hungary, Lithuania, and Switzerland.

About the Panelists

Jayashri Wyatt is the Chief of Education Outreach, in the UN Department of Global Communications. She is a seasoned communications professional with a wealth of experience in the United Nations System producing high-level events, advocacy campaigns, and films for the Department of Global Communications, UNICEF, and the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA). She also has nearly a decade of experience as an educator championing women’s empowerment and gender equality.

Elżbieta Ficowska was born in the Warsaw ghetto in 1942 to Henia and Jossel Koppel. She survived because she was smuggled to the “Aryan side” and was hid from Germans by Stanisława Bussold, a 56-year-old midwife and member of the underground who helped 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 travelling exhibition Between Life and Death. For many years, she has been active in the Association of Children of the Holocaust, sharing her personal testimony of rescue and remembrance.

Dr. Mordecai Paldiel headed the Righteous Among the Nations Department at Yad Vashem from 1982-2007 and he serves on the Board of the Sousa Mendes Foundation. His books include Remembrance and Meaning: Dialogues and Thoughts on the Significance of Holocaust Rescuers; The Path of the Righteous: Gentile Rescuers of Jews During the Holocaust; Sheltering the Jews: Stories of Holocaust Rescuers; Churches and the Holocaust: Unholy Teaching, Good Samaritans and Reconciliation; Whosoever Saves One Life: The Uniqueness of the Righteous Among the Nations; Saving the Jews: Amazing Stories of Men and Women Who Defied the Final Solution; Diplomat Heroes of the Holocaust; German Rescuers of Jews: Individuals versus the Nazi System; Polish Rescuers of Jews: Selected Stories of Amazing Acts of Goodness; Poland, the Jews and the Holocaust: Promised Beginnings and Troubled Past; Saving One’s Own: Jewish Rescuers During the Holocaust and Righteous or Not: The Honoring of Rescuers of Jews. He serves on the B’nai B’rith Commission to honor Jewish rescuers of Jews during the Holocaust. Thanks to his efforts, there is now a square named for Aristides de Sousa Mendes in Jerusalem. He provided the list of 60 diplomat-rescuers honored by the US Congress in 2024 in the Forgotten Heroes of the Holocaust Congressional Gold Medal Act.

Jay Winter is the Charles J. Stille Professor of History Emeritus at Yale University and a leading scholar of 20th-century European history. A specialist on the World War I, he has profoundly influenced the study of memory, mourning, and the cultural consequences of modern conflict. He is the author of numerous seminal works, including Sites of Memory, Sites of Mourning: The Great War in European Cultural History (1995), The Great War and the Shaping of the 20th Century (1996), René Cassin and Human Rights (2013), The Cultural History of War in the Twentieth Century and After (2022), and most recently The Day the Great War Ended, 24 July 1923: The Civilianization of War (2022). He holds honorary degrees from the universities of Graz, Leuven, and Paris.

Daniel Blatman is the Max and Rita Haber Professor Emeritus of Contemporary Jewry and Holocaust Studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He previously served as director of the University’s Institute of Contemporary Jewry and of the Center for the Study of the History and Culture of Polish Jewry. His research focuses on twentieth-century Polish Jewry, the Jewish labor movement in Eastern Europe, the Jews of the Warsaw Ghetto, Polish–Jewish relations during the Holocaust and its aftermath, and Nazi extermination policy. Among his major publications are For Our Freedom and Yours: The Jewish Labor Bund in Poland, 1939–1945; Reportage from the Ghetto: The Jewish Underground Press in the Warsaw Ghetto; The Death Marches: The Final Phase of Nazi Genocide; and Conflicting Histories and Coexistence: New Perspectives on the Jewish–Polish Encounters. He is the recipient of the Jacob Buchman Memorial Prize, the Yad Vashem International Prize in Holocaust Studies, and was a finalist for the National Jewish Book Award.

The project was prepared by the European Network Remembrance and Solidarity (ENRS) in cooperation with the POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews in Warsaw and the Silent Heroes Memorial Centre in Berlin. The exhibition was first presented at the headquarters of the European Commission in Brussels in January 2018. Since then, it has been displayed in numerous locations across Europe and Japan, including Amsterdam, Bratislava, Vilnius, Budapest, Bucharest, Bern, Dresden, Osaka, Yokohama, Tsuruga, Gifu, Szczecin, Gdańsk, Strasbourg, Bad Ischl, and Dublin. The presentation at the United Nations Headquarters in New York will be the exhibition’s first showing in North America.