by Nina Vaclavikova
Interview: Anna Krekic, Curator of Castello di San Giusto and the Risiera di San Sabba
Trieste will observe Holocaust Remembrance Day on Tuesday, Jan. 27, 2026, with a series of official ceremonies centered on the Risiera di San Sabba, Italy’s only former Nazi extermination camp and a National Monument, alongside a broader cultural program extending through early February.
The day’s commemorations will begin at 9 a.m. with a wreath-laying at the Coroneo Prison in memory of Giovanni Palatucci, followed by a silent march to Trieste’s Central Station. At 10 a.m., city officials will honor the victims deported from the station between 1943 and 1945, before the main public ceremony at 11 a.m. in the courtyard of the Risiera di San Sabba. Attendance is free, subject to capacity limits, and the ceremony will be livestreamed by the Municipality of Trieste.
Beyond Jan. 27, the city and the Risiera di San Sabba Museum have organized a program of screenings, performances, talks and guided visits aimed at deepening public understanding of the Holocaust and its local history. Highlights include the installation of 20 new Stolpersteine (stumbling stones) across Trieste on Jan. 21; the screening of a documentary on the Nazi Aktion T4 “euthanasia” program; a theatrical production for schools examining eugenics and mass murder; and free guided tours of the Risiera on Jan. 24 and 25.
Additional events will explore Holocaust memory through theater, graphic novels and survivor testimony, including an evening dedicated to Simon Gronowski, a Belgian survivor who escaped deportation to Auschwitz as a child. The program will conclude on Feb. 3 with the presentation of an English-language volume on the history of the San Sabba camp.
Together, the ceremonies and cultural initiatives reflect Trieste’s continued effort to link remembrance with education, situating its local wartime history within the broader legacy of the Holocaust in Europe.
