„Due to the casual encounter with the faces of the survivors in public spaces, a debate automatically occurs. Especially the younger generation might not be interested in visiting memorial sites. That´s why we need to take this the project to the streets” Toscano, March, 3rd. 2020

From 17 April to 12 May, the photo exhibition of the artist Luigi Toscano with 20 of 400 life-size portraits of Holocaust survivors will take place on our school grounds. At the end, a talk with the artist is planned in a vernissage on Thursday 11 May from 4-6pm.

Luigi Toscano was the first photographer ever to be named an “Artist for Peace” by UNESCO in 2021. He has already been to Paris and New York with his exhibition, as well as to numerous schools. He was also awarded the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany in 2021.

The aim of this exhibition is to visit the exhibition with our classes and to integrate it into our lessons and to engage in conversation about it.

LEST WE FORGET is a project by the German-Italien photographer and filmmaker Luigi Toscano under the patronage of the German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas. In 2014, he started traveling in order to meet Holocaust survivors who are now living in the US, Germany, the Netherlands, Belarus, Ukraine, Israel and Russia.

He gave them the opportunity to share their personal story – probably for the last time. The result: more than 400 portrait photos – the heart of the project.

More than one million visitors worldwide have seen the photo installation LEST WE FORGET. In 2015 it was shown for the first time in Luigi Toscano’s hometown Mannheim. One year later it accompanied the state ceremony for the commemoration of the massacres in Babyn Yar in Kyiv, in which the then-president of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko, the then-patron of this project the German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier and the mayor of Kyiv Vitali Klitshko participated.

We are pleased to invite interested parties to a discussion with the photographer in a relaxed atmosphere on 11 May from 4-6pm on our school grounds.

Thank you very much for visiting the exhibition and for the interesting discussions.

(Photos: @Kristin Peschutter)