Performing Art-Based Memory Practice on Jewish Holocaust Refugee Stories with University Students

MEM-ART UNI responds to the urgent need to preserve Holocaust memory and counter rising antisemitism by engaging new generations in participatory remembrance. It develops innovative ways of transmitting Holocaust history and its long-term effects— an urgent task as the last eyewitnesses pass away. Implemented in Vienna, Marseille, and Wrocław, the project situates local Jewish histories within a European framework. Its aims to inspire younger generations for Holocaust remembrance, strengthen locally grounded yet transnational cultures of memory, empower participants to confront Holocaust denial and antisemitism, increase the visibility of Jewish life in local contexts, and develop innovative higher-education Holocaust education training formats transferable to other learning settings. At the heart of the project, humanities students act as Ambassadors of Remembrance within an innovative two-component practice. The first component fosters intergenerational memory work through video-interviews with descendants of Jewish Holocaust survivors who escaped persecution through flight. The second component translates these testimonies into artistic memory practices: students collaborate with educators and professional artists to create films, audio walks, and performances that transform microhistorical experiences of flight and displacement into immersive public encounters. By focusing on the theme of flight, MEM-ART UNI links history to present realities, including political debates, gender-specific and intersectional dimensions. It highlights the impact of displacement on subsequent generations, embeds specifically Jewish experiences within broader historical and geographic contexts, and makes a pressing contemporary issue tangible through individual stories. While rooted in universities, the project reaches diverse audiences—including students, descendants, children and youth, teachers, researchers, and local civic society—through a wide range of public events.