This week's Holocaust Remembrance Day, January 27th, marked the conclusion of the World Jewish Congress’ 2019 #WeRemember viral campaign, where everyone from celebrities and media personalities to politicians and millennials around the world show support by posting pictures on social media holding a #WeRemember sign.
The viral campaign, now in its third year, has taken off. While numbers are still being tabulated for the 2019 campaign, the 2018 campaign reached 650 million people in 155 countries, thanks to the efforts of 1.5 million participants. More than one out of 11 people on the planet were reached last year, in 50 countries and in 20 languages.
In 2017, the year the campaign launched, the goal was to generate over six million impressions, which it easily surpassed.
The campaign this year, which ran from January 6th to 27th, included many standout participants and events. Last week, for example, the Italian Mission to NATO streamed photos and hosted a photo booth from its offices in Brussels. In New York, Twitter hosted an event in its offices that featured a 45-minute speech by a Holocaust survivor from Poland who was rescued by a non-Jewish family. Snapchat partnered with the campaign this year, as did UNESCO, which co-sponsored a website this year called Aboutholocaust.org.
"We've had millions of videos, and are estimating tens of millions of people will be reached, says Sacha Dratwa, who is the head of the WJC Digital Advocacy Unit and, with Chief Program Officer Sonia Gomes de Mesquita, the creative force behind the program. "Schools from all over the world are participating. There is much more happening, but we've seen pictures coming from Botswana, from Greece, from New Guinea."
Adds Cory Weiss, special projects coordinator at the WJC, "We try to reach as many people as possible without differentiating among countries. We've had participation in Uzbekistan, Mongolia, Greenland—countries you wouldn’t think have a connection."
Indeed, a hallmark of the campaign is its universality. The United Kingdom Muslim organization Voice of Salam posted a photo. The German newspaper Bild was a partner in 2017, as was the British newspaper Jewish News.
"This is just the third year of the campaign, and what we've seen and what we're trying to do this year, is what we projected we've be doing in 10 years," Dratwa says.
