In March this year, the Embassy of Israel in Copenhagen co-hosted an event with the Embassy of Germany and the Danish Jewish Museum to raise awareness of the Holocaust and combat antisemitism. While the Holocaust is a dark cloud in the history of several countries, Denmark stands out for its efforts in evacuating more than 7,200 of its 7,800 Jews to neutral Sweden in 1945.
However, Denmark has recently experienced horrific antisemitic attacks, and has urged the Danish government to present an ambitious action plan to combat antisemitism. In the magnificent setting of the National Library of Denmark, the Ambassador of Israel, David Akov, the Ambassador of Germany, Pascal Hector, and the Director of the Danish Jewish Museum, Janus Møller-Jensen, delivered their opening remarks on this special evening.
The screening of the Holocaust documentary “#Uploading_Holocaust,” directed by Israeli film directors Sagi Bornstein & Udi Nir, was presented to an audience of specially invited scholars from the field of Danish academia. Those in attendance witnessed a compelling and never-before-seen documentary about the ever-relevant topic of the Holocaust that tells the intimate and personal stories of thousands of young Israelis who annually join the Journey to Poland through videos filmed and uploaded on YouTube by the youngsters themselves.
The two Israeli directors, whose visit to Copenhagen was primarily funded by the Embassy, were in the Danish capital as part of a large Israeli CoPro delegation that was invited to participate in a networking conference organized by the Copenhagen International Documentary Film Festival (CPH:DOX), one of Europe’s largest documentary film festivals. They concluded the emotional evening with a question and answer session, inspiring the audience to critical thinking and societal awareness that offered an opportunity to reflect on teaching the topic of the Holocaust and antisemitism to Danish students in the future.
About the movie: Every year Israeli teenagers by the thousands go on a very special school trip: The “Journey to Poland” takes them to former concentration camps, and to memorials. They capture their experiences in YouTube videos, thus allowing for a moving insight into the history of the Jews in Europe.