Through to June 13, 2026, the EVZ Foundation is marking its anniversary with a wide range of projects and activities in Germany and across Europe.

Today, December 1, the Foundation launches its EVZ Academy – online platform!, offering learning formats on Nazi forced labor, diversity awareness, human rights and memory culture.

The launch will be streamed live on YouTube at 11 a.m. Afterwards, the platform will be freely accessible to everyone. Selected offerings will be featured in our newsletter section Pearl Finder.

Also on December 1, the network event EVZ Connect brings together partner organizations and project executing agencies from 25 years of Foundation work with the aim of developing forward-looking responses to current challenges.

On December 2, 2025, the EVZ Foundation celebrates its 25th anniversary with representatives from politics, business and civil society, both in Germany and partner countries. Eleven survivors of Nazi persecution will attend as guests of honor: their presence will make the evening a profoundly meaningful moment of encounter.

Federal President Frank-Walter Steinmeier is the patron of the anniversary year and will speak at the event. Companions and partners will offer their personal reflections on lived remembrance and commitment – they also share their stories in the video series #25EVZVoices.

Episode 1 “Forced labor was everywhere”, opens the series: How did the system that sustained the Nazi war economy function, and how did it shape the lives of those affected? In addition to Ludvik Jirus’ story, the episode includes the testimony of former forced laborer Alicja Kubecka. Historians Christine Glauning and Mark Spoerer offer historical context.

As part of its 25th anniversary, the EVZ Foundation invites people of all ages from Germany and across Europe to take part in HISTODAY 2026, a European history festival that takes a critical look at the past and poses bold questions for the future.

UNESCO Artist for Peace Luigi Toscano traveled through Eastern Europe in the summer of 2024 to meet the last survivors of the genocide against the Sinti/Sintize and Roma/Romnja. The result is a series of large-format portraits that preserve their stories and memories through multimedia elements. For Toscano, his work is a “human project”: it is about engaging in conversation with historical eyewitnesses, many of whom spoke publicly about their lives for the first time. Toscano says that each photograph marks the end of a long process.

The images were exhibited in Germany for the first time, in cooperation with the German Museum of Technology in Berlin. They will remain accessible around the clock at Steinplatz in Berlin-Charlottenburg until December 6, 2025.

After liberation, the family returned to their hometown of Trier, where Christian Pfeil built a successful career in gastronomy – though repeatedly overshadowed by right-wing extremist and racist attacks. For many years, he has been committed to boosting local remembrance efforts in the city. Pfeil has previously represented the Documentation and Cultural Center of German Sinti and Roma on the International Auschwitz Committee, and he delivered the keynote address on European Holocaust Memorial Day for Sinti and Roma on August 2, 2022 at the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial.

When you look back today at your family history and your own childhood, what do you believe is most important for younger generations to understand about your family’s fate and the genocide against the Sinti and Roma?

Young people – including young Sinti – know far too little about what happened and about what my family and all Sinti had to endure under the Nazi regime. Explaining this to them and speaking to them about it is absolutely essential.

The EVZ Foundation was established 25 years ago. What has this meant to you personally – as a survivor and as someone who has been engaged in remembrance work for many years?

For me, the encounters with young people are the most important thing – as on August 2 in Oświęcim, for example. These encounters between survivors and the younger generation have been strongly supported by the EVZ Foundation, and I believe that is absolutely crucial.

When you think about the next 25 years, what do you hope for the future – in terms of remembrance of the genocide against the Sinti and Roma and in terms of the fight against antigypsyism in our society?

Between 1932 and 1933, several million people in Ukraine starved to death as the result of a famine deliberately engineered by the communist totalitarian regime – the Holodomor. This policy of destruction targeted rural regions in particular, where grain was confiscated, freedom of movement was restricted, and people were deprived of the means to survive. The aim was to break resistance in Ukraine, destroy national identity, and establish total control.

In November 2023, Nadija Slesarewa visited the EVZ Foundation. As a survivor of Stalinist terror, the Holodomor, and Nazi persecution in the Stutthof concentration camp, she spoke in a moving interview about the importance of global remembrance of the Holodomor in order to prevent such a crime from ever happening again. She shared her painful memories of a time “when people were dying in a rich and beautiful country.”

In 2022, the Bundestag recognized the Holodomor as genocide against the Ukrainian people – an important affirmation of historical truth, justice, and remembrance of the victims. This recognition also matters in the context of today’s Russian war against Ukraine, in which Moscow once again seeks to delegitimize Ukrainian statehood and erase Ukraine’s identity. The historical record shows that such strategies of violence form part of a long tradition of repressive imperial policy.