Holocaust Education outside IHRA Member Countries at the Salzburg Global Seminar

Following the third Salzburg Global Seminar on Holocaust and Genocide Prevention, Salzburg Global has compiled information on Holocaust education in non-IHRA countries. The information is available on a dedicated section of the Salzburg Global website.

47 participants representing 29 countries gathered for the third Salzburg Global Seminar on Holocaust and Genocide Prevention: Sharing Experiences Across Borders between 21-26 June 2014. Funding was provided by IHRA with the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, the Austrian Future Fund, the Austrian National Fund, and the Pratt Foundation.

This seminar addressed the “glaring gap” in Holocaust education beyond IHRA and its member countries. IHRA delegate Klaus Mueller who has chaired the Salzburg Initiative on Holocaust Education since its inception in 2010, recounted developments and contributions in the field outside the IHRA network and spoke of moving the debate of the last decade away from “a culture of reaction to a culture of prevention.”  He challenged the conference to look at the “complex relationship between teaching about and learning from the Holocaust and other genocides.”

2014 IHRA Chair, Sir Andrew Burns, reminded the group not to allow the memory of the Holocaust to fade, since “it serves as a warning of what happened once and could happen again … and that learning about - and from – it can build a “firebreak” to slow the progress between prejudice past and future.” The full speech can be heard here.

During the symposium, participants reviewed the 2010 IHRA guidelines " The Holocaust and Other Genocides" and developed recommendations from a more global perspective, as outlined in the 2014 session report.

Recommendations which emerged from the seminar included:

• Proposing an IHRA position statement to widen the audience to include other genocides and acknowledge that in some places teachers as well as students can be ‘traumatized’ when learning about the Holocaust and genocide
• expanding the list of materials on other genocides, particularly film
• more examples of purpose or why it is important to teach the Holocaust beyond the ‘historical’
• Expand material on context to include more information for countries with a small or no Jewish population
• A need for clearer standards for Holocaust education

Helpful Links:

Education Working Group Paper on the Holocaust and Other Genocides (2010)

Photo: Courtesy of Salzburg Global Seminar