Yehuda Bauer Grant

At the October 2013 Plenary meeting in Toronto, IHRA established the "Yehuda Bauer Grant" in recognition of the contributions of IHRA’s Honorary Chairman.  Beginning with the 2014 call for applications, IHRA will award this honor annually to an outstanding project proposal submitted through IHRA’s Grant Programme. 

The recipient of the Yehuda Bauer Grant is selected by the Funding Review Committee from among all proposals recommended to IHRA’s member country delegations for funding.  The criteria follow the Grant Guidelines with a particular emphasis on the multilateral aspect and the significance of the target groups.

Recipients of the Yehuda Bauer Grant will be profiled in a special feature on the IHRA website to recognize both the project and the awarded organization or institution.

Yehuda Bauer Grant 2017

The Museum of Independence Traditions in Lodz uses new technologies to create a common platform for the commemoration of the victims of the Lodz Ghetto.

A 3D model of fragments of the Lodz Ghetto area is being built and exhibited in the museum at the Radegast Station. Research in the Lodz archives is being carried out to enrich the creation of a central repository of materials pertaining to Jewish life and the fate of Jews during Nazi time. These activities are combined with work on an online educational tool, including the visualisation of the 3D model and providing information about the objects found on the model and allowing differences between the Lodz structure and other ghettos to be highlighted and examined. The website is available in Polish, Hebrew, English and German. Finally, a mobile application will be integrated into this online source. The results of the project so far can be seen here: http://radegast.pl/en.html

The IHRA was particularly pleased by the fact that this project offers valuable tools for lessons that could be used in different contexts in various countries and hereby bears the potential to have an impact worldwide.

Yehuda Bauer Grant 2016

“Developing the Framework for the Large-scale Project: The European Library Platform for Holocaust Education - Contributing Educational Content To National And International Holocaust Memorial Days Commemorations Through Multilateral Cooperation Of National Libraries Of Europe” by Terraforming South, Serbia.

The project aims to create a large-scale European library network aiming to develop the framework for a collaborative platform of international resources for Holocaust education in the context of memorial days. The project thereby follows up on an existing IHRA-funded project which resulted in an online platform for librarians and teachers in Serbia, and seeks to enhance its educational methodology and concept to the international level. Ultimately the European Library Platform will target librarians, educationalists, multipliers and decision makers in Holocaust education and remembrance. During this phase the project focuses on analyzing the existing infrastructure and expertise of international library networks, creating an international expert team, establishing international partnerships and multilateral cooperation between national libraries, and developing a detailed concept framework to be presented at a final expert meeting.

In light of its excellent quality, its highly multilateral dimension and efforts to establish an international cooperation using existing infrastructure among a rarely targeted group, it was decided to award this project with the Yehuda Bauer Grant in 2016.

Yehuda Bauer Grant 2015

“Latin American Network Capacity Building Seminar for Genocide Prevention“ by the Auschwitz Institute for Peace and Reconciliation, United States, in cooperation with the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum, Poland.

The Latin American Network Capacity Building reaches out to public officials in Latin America, offering bi-annual seminars in the practice of genocide prevention, alternately in Auschwitz-Birkenau and a site related to genocide or mass atrocities in Latin America. By addressing topics and questions such as “What caused the Holocaust? What were the warning signs? What preventative  actions were taken, though unsuccessful?” the Holocaust becomes the central case study in the seminars. The participants of the seminar are to become agents of genocide and atrocity crime prevention in their country. In cooperation with the Auschwitz Institute for Peace and Reconciliation, the targeted governments work to implement a standardized training curriculum that should become obligatory for all civil servants in the region and thus make the benefits of this programme available to the entire population of civil servants.

In light of the project’s important regional focus, the prospect for sustainability and the applicant’s consistently impressive work, the IHRA decided to award this project with the Yehuda Bauer Grant in 2015.

Yehuda Bauer Grant 2014

“International Colloquium: Bystanders, Rescuers or Perpetrators? The Neutrals and the Shoah - Facts, Memories, Myths and Counter-Myths” by Centro Sefarad-Israel in Madrid, Spain

The project examined the attitude and reaction of the neutral countries during World War II (specifically Argentina, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, and Turkey) to the Holocaust. Recent archival research has challenged long-standing opinions on refugee policies and rescue myths, however only from a national perspective. The international colloquium included a comparative perspective for the first time. Scholars with expertise in all the countries involved were invited to exchange the latest research findings and establish a network for international exchange and cooperation. A call for papers ensured that young scholars had the chance to participate and contribute.

IHRA awarded the first-ever Yehuda Bauer Grant to this project on the basis of its strong multilateral aspect, its focus on an under-researched issue, and the inclusion of a comparative perspective on an international level that will add valuable contributions to the field of Holocaust research. 

The colloquium took place in November 2014 and the conference papers will be published as the second volume in the new IHRA publication series in 2016.