Abstract

This article aims to discuss the origins, the meaning and the educational uses of Holocaust Memorial Day and the function of memorial politics in social and political consciousness in Europe, and above all in Italy. Holocaust Memorial Day is connected with how the lessons of the past can inform our lives today and ensure that everyone works together to create a safer, better future. Visits dealing with the Holocaust - to memorial sites and museums, or to Nazi concentration camps (Auschwitz-Birkenau) - can provide students with a concrete picture of the possible consequences of failing to respect human rights. On the other hand, the growth after 1989 of such activities as memorial trips and Memory Trains, are similar to different forms of political pilgrimages in the twentieth century (above all, political journeys to different places of political utopias, etc.): during the twentieth century, the political travel experience was devoted to meeting and learning about different forms of a possible future, while the memory train is devoted to learning how to avoid repeating a terrible past.