University of Chester exhibition to mark Holocaust Memorial Day

An exhibition to mark Holocaust Memorial Day will take place at the University of Chester.

To mark Holocaust Memorial Day on Monday, January 27, the University’s Culture and Society RKEI (Research, Knowledge and Exchange Institute) is showing an exhibition about the history of the Nazis’ November 1938 pogrom, entitled ‘Pogrom 1938:

Testimonies from Kristallnacht’. The exhibition is the result of a project instigated by London’s Wiener Holocaust Library.

The November pogrom marked another significant escalation in the Nazis’ brutal persecution of Germany’s (and by then Austria’s) Jewish population.

Across two days, the Nazi regime organised and co-ordinated a nationwide wave of violence against Jews, their homes, businesses and places of worship. In total, 1,200 synagogues were attacked, many of them totally destroyed.

Although euphemistically known as the ‘Night of Broken Glass’ (Kristallnacht), the pogrom – as the exhibition shows – was far more than just smashed windows. Some 100 people were killed in the violence and thousands more interned in concentration camps in the days that followed.

The exhibition is part of the Wiener Library’s ‘Pogrom 1938: Testimonies from Kristallnacht’ project and more information can be found at: https://www.pogromnovember1938.co.uk/viewer/

The RKEI is an interdisciplinary institute that brings together over 200 researchers, providing a platform for collaborations, public events and external partnerships.

Over the past two years, the Culture and Society Research, Knowledge and Exchange Institute (RKEI) has hosted a series of rolling exhibitions in the Seaborne Library at Exton Park, off Parkgate Road, Chester.

This new exhibition is open to the public and located in the Gallery space on the upper second floor of the Seaborne library. It can be accessed via the main entrance during staffed opening hours – Monday to Friday 8.30am-8pm and on weekends 12pm-6pm. Members of the public are asked to make themselves known to the Helpdesk before visiting the exhibition.

Professor Tim Grady, Director of the Culture & Society RKEI, said: “This is an incredibly powerful exhibition that starkly lays out the sheer violence of the Nazi regime. Holocaust Memorial Day 2025 marks the liberation of Auschwitz and the end of the Second World War. But as we look forward, it’s also important to remember the escalation of anti-Jewish violence that occurred in the years before the war had even started.”