The goal of the scientific meetings Each Year One Name is to publicly present the recent research findings from the field of the history of the Holocaust, anti-Semitism, and at the same time, life stories of the so-called Righteous Among the Nations and individuals who were victims of the Nazi destruction machine during the Second World War.
This year, the international scientific meeting, which is traditionally organized on the occasion of the International Holocaust Remembrance Day, is devoted to the Slovenian Righteous Ivan Breskvar. Breskvar was born in 1905 in Ljubljana and lived in Varaždin after 1931. As a textile engineer, he started to work at the Varaždin Silk Factory, later he became the head of the Department for Silk Manufacture. He married Josipa who lived in Varaždin and they got three children. His colleague at the Factory was Milan Blass, a son of a Jewish merchant from Cirkulane. When during the Holocaust, Milan Blass tried to save two Jewish boys from certain death, Ivan Breskvar helped him. In 1998, Yad Vashem awarded Ivan Breskvar the Righteous Among the Nations title.
At the scientific meeting, Prof. Boris Hajdinjak will present the persecution of Jews in the north-western part of Croatia and the Slovenian Righteous Ivan Breskvar. Historian Dejan Süč will talk about the history of Jews of Dolnja Lendava and their fate during the Holocaust, and Franc Kuzmič will present some testimonies of some Slovenian survived victims of concentration camps. Dr Renato Podbersič will participate with a paper comparing the Nazi and Fascist anti-Jewish legislation, Dr Gerald Lamprecht with a paper on an Austrian smuggler of Jewish refugees Josef Schleich and Dr Ljiljana Dobrovšak with a paper on Croatian Righteous Among the Nations. Dr Anna Maria Grünfelder will present the attitude of the communist Yugoslavia towards the Holocaust victims.
The scientific meeting will take place at the Glazer hall of the University of Maribor Library. It will be opened by Marjetka Bedrač, Acting Director of the Center of Jewish Cultural Heritage Synagogue Maribor, and Dr Zdenka Petermanec, Head of the University of Maribor Library. The visitors will be addressed by ambassador Blanka Jamnišek from the Human Rights Department of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Slovenia.
The event will be organized in cooperation with the University of Maribor Library as a part of the project Shoah – Let Us Remember 2017, which was supported by the Municipality of Maribor and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Slovenia.
The honorary patron of the project Shoah – Let Us Remember 2017 is Borut Pahor, the President of the Republic of Slovenia.