The Director of the Auschwitz Memorial, Piotr Cywiński, and cultural expert Danuta Glondys will reflect on memory policies and genocides on 20 January at the historic building of the University of Barcelona
Barcelona, 15 January 2026 — On the occasion of the International Day of Commemoration in Memory of the Victims of the Holocaust (27 January), the European Observatory on Memories (EUROM) of the Solidarity Foundation of the University of Barcelona is organising the event Auschwitz and the Construction of European Memory, a forum dedicated to reflecting on the origins, meaning and impact of the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial on European culture and identity.
The event will take place on 20 January at 6:30 pm, in the Ramon i Cajal Lecture Hall at the University of Barcelona, and will feature Dr Piotr Cywiński, Director of the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum and Memorial (Poland), and Dr Danuta Glondys, a cultural expert with personal ties to the history of the memorial.
The session will open with a keynote lecture by Piotr Cywiński, focusing on the origins of the memorial, inaugurated in 1947. Trained as a historian, Cywiński will also examine the historical and political context in which the memorial was created and its influence on the shaping of cultural identity in Poland and across Europe. His talk will further address the role of commemorative sites in transmitting the past and in shaping collective responsibility towards history.
This will be followed by a dialogue between Cywiński and Dr Danuta Glondys, who brings a unique perspective combining personal experience—having witnessed as a child the early stages of the memorial’s creation, where her mother worked—with a distinguished institutional career. She has served as Deputy Mayor for Culture of the City of Kraków and as Director of Villa Decius, a Polish cultural foundation with a strong international profile, and has also worked as a consultant for the European Commission. Moderated by journalist Teresa Turiera-Puigbó, the conversation will focus on current debates surrounding Holocaust remembrance and will open a broader reflection on memory policies in relation to genocides in recent history and in the present.
The discussion will also address the social and political uses of traumatic pasts in a global context still marked by mass violence and the violation of human rights.
Cover image: Ceremony marking the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, January 27, 2025. Source: EUROM. Images of the event will be uploaded on Flickr.