Holocaust Foundation to create a new world-class learning centre
The UK Holocaust Memorial Foundation (UKHMF) will create a learning centre to advance Holocaust education in every part of the country.
The world-class learning centre will accompany a new national memorial. The centre will use the latest technology to engage and inspire visitors.
The learning centre will be responsible for developing a campus and an online hub, bringing together a network of the UK’s existing Holocaust education partners. It will support them in driving a renewed national effort to advance Holocaust education in every part of the country. The learning centre will also help people understand the way the lessons of the Holocaust apply more widely, including to other genocides.
It will include a lecture theatre, classrooms and the possibility to set up offices or satellite offices, within a wider campus.
The online hub will support a network of Holocaust education partners, enabling them to share expertise, resources and best practice, wherever they are located. It will also provide a single access point for educational resources, research and testimony, clearly signposting teaching and learning materials from trusted sources.
At its heart, the learning centre will drive a renewed national effort to extend high quality Holocaust education to all parts of the country, partly through the use of technology in developing innovative ways to educate young people in the classroom.
Finally, the learning centre will support its partners in working with leading international institutions to advance the global effort.
The future of Holocaust education
At the core of the activity generated by the learning centre will be an endowment fund to secure the long-term future of Holocaust education.
This fund will be fundamental in ensuring that local projects and travelling exhibitions can be supported and that the national memorial and learning centre in London is at the heart of a national network of activity, driving improvements in Holocaust education.
Preserving the testimony of British Holocaust survivors and liberators
We conducted an urgent audit of existing Holocaust testimony. We then started recording and preserving 20 first-hand testimonies of British Holocaust survivors and of the British personnel involved in the liberation and relief of Bergen Belsen concentration camp.
Following the recording of the first 20 testimony films, the UKHMF has appointed Atlantic Productions to continue the urgent task of recording testimony interviews of Holocaust survivors in Britain.
Over the next year, the project will collect and preserve the testimonies of up to 100 survivors using the latest technology, focusing on previously unrecorded stories.
To ensure the welfare of survivors taking part, UKHMF is working alongside organisations that specialise in providing emotional and physical support to Holocaust survivors.
The foundation will also be consulting with academics and educational experts in the field to shape the methodology of the project.
For more information visit UKHMF.