In the context of International Holocaust Remembrance Day, on the 27 th of January 2022, eight theater projects will be performed by young people in seven European countries at the initiative of Theater Na de Dam. With these performances based on eyewitnesses, Theater Na de Dam and its eight partners provide this commemoration day with extra significance. The youngsters reflect on the meaning of this war in present day Europe.

Rückwärts, Berlin

Rückwärts is an audiovisual and dance performance based on questions such as: How can we commemorate what has happened during the holocaust today? How can we tackle this big issue in small ways? Which emotions are connected to this? What makes us trip up in life and why? When do I turn around and look back – and when do I look away? What do you see passing you by?

The performance can be followed via livestream on January 27th at 8 PM via this link.

Re/Fraction, Budapest

There are moments when the continuity of life is broken. These moments stay with us, they are parts of our stories, bodies, communities. Sometimes they stay with us as crystal clear images, sometimes we have to look for the connections with them, to reclaim parts of our lives: a name that sounds familiar, a forgotten taste, some streets that we’ve been unconsciously avoiding.

We are looking for connections with stories of the elderly who have lived the Holocaust with 12 young peple from Budapest. Through our performance we’re sharing the outcome of our research. Our performance is site specific, it is focused on Klauzál tér in Budapest, and commemorates the former ghetto of Budapest and the deportations from Hungary 

The performance is created within the framework of Personal Histories Budapest, that has been organizing community theater processes in Budapest for four years.

The Unforgettable story, Warsaw

This performance is a series of etudes based on conversations between young people involved in the project and senior citizens – witnesses of the Second World War.

The stories of Mrs. Ela, Mrs. Basia, Mr. Bolesław and Mr. Eugeniusz – personal, moving, unusual, sometimes surprising – were an inspiration and starting point for the group to reflect and find analogies between the past and present times.

What kind of world do we live in? What kind of world do we want to live in, and what kind we don’t want to live in? What problems do young people think are important in today’s world?

What do we have to face up to so that what the witnesses of history experienced never happens?

The youth group met a year ago at ZOOM to create an online performance. This year they planned to stage the last year’s performance live. Unfortunately, due to COVID 19, the performance has been moved to march.

We are the memory, Prague

The performance We are the Memory 2022 commemorates the events of the “Heydrichiáda” which is the collective name for a period of severe repression carried out by the German Nazi occupiers during World War II in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia in connection with the person representing the Reich Protector – Reinhard Heydrich.
In the premises of the Church of St. Cyril and Methodius, a group of eleven young actors will recall the bravery of the people who provided support for the paratroopers. The task is to revive the stories of those who were fatally affected by the events around the assassination of the Reich Protector.

Act of Remembrance, Lviv

The performance is based on the oral history of Mykola Petrenko as recorded by the team of the history project #unheard. Mykola Petrenko was an eyewitness in the Holocaust and this performance is in honor of his story and all the other unheard stories of the Holocaust.

The performance is part of a series of events in the city of Lviv and in the Terrority of Terror Museum. Unfortunately, due to COVID 19, these events have been cancelled. This performance can be viewed in Zoom on 27 January at 14:00, click here.

Memory Office, Kaunas

This performance was part of the CityTelling Festival and will be revisited for International Holocaust Remembrance Day. An excerpt from one of the letters that is read in the perfromance:

“I am grateful that you have agreed to remember the past again and to share your experiences during the war. It has been difficult for me, who has not had a similar experience living in a free democracy, to respond to your experiences. I tried to imagine, but the strong freshness of freedom within me resented as I stood to put myself in your shoes. How can freedom be taken away? How can a person not be allowed to speak? How can you close him without his own offense and try to break it? How can one voluntarily contribute to another’s death? No, it is not allowed. I tried to analyze, to understand what was going on in the minds of all the people involved in the war, what they were going through, what emotions controlled them, what they believed. I tried to understand why this happened, what the reasons or excuses were for it. But I didn’t find the slightest crumb to justify these incidents.”

Gabriele, 16

Our Heritage, Bamberg

Contweedancecollective has made a filmproject. Inspired by a story about a courageous woman and the search for her mother who disappeared in the Dutch resistance, the project is focused on the body as a storage for memories. It is a dialogue between different generations, crossing the border between The Netherlands and Germany.

Due Scarpe in Due, Turin

During this performance, the actors reflect on the lack of certain products during the war through the story of two sisters who had to share one pair of shoes.