“Our commitment must be to remember the victims who perished, respect the survivors still with us, and reaffirm humanity's common aspiration for mutual understanding and justice.”
-- Declaration of the Stockholm International Forum on the Holocaust
The Global Prevention of Genocide: Learning From the Holocaust, on 28 June - 3 July, 2010
23.06.2010
Today, many states have recognized the importance of teaching about the Holocaust and using it as a mechanism for preventing racism, ethnic conflict, and genocide. The aim of the Salzburg Global Seminar's project is to make the prevention of genocide a central part of Holocaust education curricula.
There are a growing number of state mandates, as well as impressive private initiatives, that seek to achieve this. Nevertheless, at the classroom level few schools or universities have actually succeeded in implementing Holocaust education programs that link the history of the Holocaust with the contemporary prevention of racism and genocide. This failure is exacerbated by the continuing divide and lack of communication between individuals and organizations working in the fields of Holocaust studies, and those working in the area of genocide prevention.
Chair:
Klaus Müller (Chair) - Representative for Europe, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington, DC
Speakers:
Werner Dreier - Founding Director, _erinnern.at_, Bregenz
Raquel Katzkowicz - Director, Albert Einstein School, Quito
Kimberly Mann - Manager, Holocaust and the United Nations Outreach Programme, New York
Alexander Pollak - Programme Manager for Social Research, European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights, Vienna
Marc Skvirsky - Vice President, Facing History and Ourselves, Brookline, MA
Gregory Stanton - Research Professor in Genocide Studies and Prevention, Institute for Conflict Analysis and Resolution at George Mason University, Arlington, VA
Louse Wies Van der Laan - Chef de Cabinet of the President of the International Criminal Court, The HagueYariv Lapid - Mauthausen MemorialDeborah Dwork - Director and Rose Professor of Holocaust History, Strassler Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies, Clark UniversityYehudit Inbar - Director, Museums Division, Yad VashemDina Siegel Vann - Director, American Jewish Committee's Latino and Latin American InstituteRaoul Vallejo - Former Minister of Education, EcuadorKarel Fracapane - Head on International Relations, Shoah MemorialDouglas Davidson - Special Envoy for Holocaust Issues, U.S. Department of StateKarak Mayik - Country Director, Women for Women International, SudanYael Danieli - Director, Group Project for Holocaust survivors and their childrenDarko Gavrilovic - Associate Professor, Singidunum UniversityTaylor Krauss - Director, Voices of RwandaJens Meierhenrich - Assistant Professor, Harvard UniversityIstvan Lakatos - Ambassador at Large for Human Rights, Hungary
The project has an advisory board whose members include:
- Kofi Annan, former Secretary-General of the United Nations (Honorary President)
- Yehuda Bauer, Professor of Holocaust Studies, Hebrew University of Jerusalem
- Francis Deng, Special Advisor to the UN Secretary-General on the Prevention of Genocide
- David Hamburg, President Emeritus, Carnegie Corporation of New York
- Yehudit Inbar, Director, Museums Division, Yad Vashem
- Klaus Müller, Representative for Europe, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
- Gregory Stanton, Founder and President, Genocide Watch
The project will be launched in June 2010 with an international conference, made possible by a generous grant from the Austrian Future Fund, which will bring together educators, NGOs, policy makers and other experts working in the fields of both Holocaust studies and genocide prevention to consider the root causes of modern genocides and explore the ways in which Holocaust education programs can be developed to effectively combat contemporary expressions of racism, anti-Semitism, and ethnic conflict in different regions of the world.
Planned panel discussions include: The Social and Ideological Context of Becoming a Perpetrator, The Role of States in Fomenting Racism, Genocide Prevention: A Blueprint for the Future, The Challenges and Successes of Holocaust and Genocide Education, and Training "Upstanders" not Bystanders.
The findings and recommendations of the conference will be published in a report on "Best Practices" for linking Holocaust education with the prevention of contemporary ethnic conflicts, which will also inform the development of the program in 2011 when we plan to begin working with educators from targeted regions to develop new tools and curricula that link Holocaust and genocide education with prevention. The seminar at the Salzburg Global Seminar (Austria) on "The Global Prevention of Genocide: Learning from the Holocaust" will be held in cooperation with the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Organizers hope this will lead to an annual program for teachers from around the world.