80 Candles for 80 Years exhibition touring the UK - The Jewish Chronicle

A national memorial project, which was launched for Holocaust Memorial Day 2025, is now available for members of the public to view.

The 80 Candles for 80 Years initiative, which saw 80 schools and organisations each creating a candle holder to mark 80 years since the liberation of the Nazi death camp Auschwitz-Birkenau, is being exhibited in UK museums, cultural and educational centres, as well as in a prison.

It is currently in the Soldiers of Oxfordshire Museum before it travels to eight or nine other locations, including HMP Parc prison in Bridgend in Wales and Manchester College’s city campus.

The candle holders are hugely diverse, with each one commemorating someone who lost their life during the Nazi atrocities or paying tribute to a survivor of the Holocaust.

Olivia Marks-Woldman OBE, chief executive of the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust said: "The 80 Candles for 80 Years exhibition, which is travelling across the country in collaboration with several partner organisations, offers deeply moving tributes to the lives of so many Jewish people whose lives were destroyed by the Holocaust. This national commemorative project aims to shine a light on those whose lives and voices were silenced, and to ensure they are remembered not only as victims, but as people with histories, families, and futures.”

One of the candle holders to feature in the exhibition honours the lives of Sigmund Freud’s sisters, who were murdered by the Nazis, and was created by staff at the Freud Museum.

A memorial candle holder commemorating Freud's sisters, who were murdered in the Holocaust[Missing Credit]

Emilia Raczkowska, director of education at the museum, said: “We feel transformed by what we have learnt about Freud's sisters as part of this project. It has been a profoundly moving journey. Their stories were little known before, and it has been truly enlightening to discover more about their individual tragedies.”

In the summer of 1942, the sisters, Adolfine, Marie, Pauline and Rosa, were deported are deported from Vienna. Adolfine was killed in Theresienstadt, and Marie, Pauline, and Rosa were murdered only a few hours after arriving in Treblinka.

The 80 Candles for 80 Years exhibition has already been displayed in the museum, and Raczkowska said it was “very popular with the visitors, and the theme has resonated deeply with our global audience throughout the year. We are honoured to have been part of this project.”

80 Candles for 80 Years Exhibition (Photo: the Freud Museum)[Missing Credit]

Marks-Woldman added: “By working with more than 80 partner organisations across the UK this year, we are helping to extend the histories of Jewish people who suffered in the Holocaust, and non-Jewish people who were also persecuted by the Nazis and their collaborators and enabling tens of thousands of people around the country to learn more about the past."

For the schedule of the exhibition, go to: 80candles.com/exhibition/ or see below:

80 Candles for 80 Years exhibition schedule:

Tuesday August 12 to Friday August 29: Soldiers of Oxfordshire Museum,

Tuesday September 2 to Friday September 19: The Guildhall, Worcester

Friday September 19 to Sunday September 28: Morecambe Library

Monday September 29 to Friday October 10: Leigh Spinners Mill

Monday October 13 to Friday October 24: HMP Parc (Novus Prisons), Wales

Monday October 27 - Monday November 10: Market Hall Plymouth

Tuesday November 11 to Sunday November 23: Oriel Mon, Wales

Monday November 24 to Tuesday December 9: Manchester College, City Campus (CCM)

Wednesday December 10 to Monday December 22: Sheffield Central Library

January (TBC): Southend-on-Sea City Council, Civic Centre