“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
Focus Areas
25.08.2016
Read about the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance's ongoing initiatives and areas of focus
Upcoming Events
7-10 November: IHRA Plenary Meetings in Iasi, Romania from 7-10 November.
Endangered Sites
Following a joint recommendation to the IHRA Debrecen Plenary in 2015 on the topic of endangered sites, the IHRA has been focusing its efforts on protecting and preserving endangered Holocaust-related sites throughout its Member Countries and beyond.
On 2 August 2016 the IHRA Chair and Michael Georg Link, Director of the OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR) called for greater efforts to protect endangered memorial sites related to the Roma and Sinti genocide in a joint statement.
On 12 July 2016 a delegation visited Lety u Pisku in the Czech Republic where there is currently an industrial pig farm on the site of the former Roma concentration camp. The IHRA delegation consisted of the IHRA Chair, the IHRA Executive Secretary, Dr Kathrin Meyer, as well as the Chair of IHRA's Committee on the Genocide of the Roma, Martina Maschke, ODIHR's Senior Adviser on Roma and Sinti Issues, Mirjam Karoly, and Andreea Mocanu of the IHRA Chairmanship team.
In May 2016 an IHRA delegation visited the site Staro Sajmiste in Serbia and took part in a programme on the future of the historic site. The visit included a site visit to the former concentration camp complex and meetings with the commission responsible for the future of the site, city and government officials as well as with the Head of Serbian Delegation to the IHRA, Ambassador Roksanda Nincic.
In December 2015, the IHRA Chair published a statement on the former Rabbi Tsirilson Synagogue in the Republic of Moldova, stating IHRA's deep concern about the ongoing property dispute between the government of Moldova and the Jewish community of Moldova involving the Rabbi Tsirilson Synagogue and the Magen David Yeshiva.
Other sites that the IHRA is looking into include the former Vilnius ghetto library site and the Seventh Fort in Lithuania.
Working Definition of Antisemitism
Following a recommendation from the IHRA Commitee on Antisemitism and Holocaust Denial, the IHRA adopted a working definition of antisemitism at its plenary meeting in Bucharest in May 2016. The IHRA has prodcued a fact sheet on the working definition. The German Chair-in-Office of the OSCE would like to encourage the endorsement of the working definition of antisemitism at the 23rd OSCE Ministerial Council in Hamburg on 8/9 December 2016.
Conferences
The IHRA Multi-Year Work Plan on Killing Sites will hold a conference in Vilnius, Lithuania in March 2016 entitled “Mass Murder Began. Identifying and Remembering the Killing Sites of Summer-Fall 1941”.
A conference on the connection between the Mass Murder of the Handicapped and the Holocaust is planned as a pre-Plenary conference to be held in June 2017 in Switzerland. The conference will focus on the continuities regarding the methods and perpetrators and aims to include research on murders in Germany and Austria as well as more recent research which deals with murders which took in occupied Eastern and Western Europe. Aside from IHRA delegates, the conference will target experts in the field, journalists and teachers.
Genocide Prevention
The Committee on the Holocaust, Genocide, and Crimes against Humanity is also developing a strategy for IHRA representation at global platforms related to atrocity prevention and Responsibility-To-Protect. The Committee is pleased to have invited Mô Bleeker, Special Envoy and head of the Task force for Dealing with the Past and Prevention of Atrocities, join them as a special guest in Iasi.
Archival Access
The 31 Member Countries of the IHRA have pledged to uphold the tenets of the Declaration of the Stockholm forum on the Holocaust (2000). This includes a commitment to “take all necessary steps to facilitate the opening of archives in order to ensure that all documents bearing on the Holocaust are available to researchers.” In Manchester in 2014, the plenary decided that all Member Countries should review still-classified or otherwise administratively restricted archival material pertaining to the Holocaust and submit these reviews to the plenary. A report will be compiled in 2016 based on the results.
Research Projects
A Matter of Comparision
The Committee on the Holocaust, Genocide, and Crimes against Humanity has recently completed a research project on institutions, governmental and non-governmental organizations that offer programs on teaching about the Holocaust and genocide. The survey will be presented at the Iasi Plenary and will then be published online on the IHRA website in November 2016.
Education Research
IHRA's Multi-Year Work Plan on Education Research aimed to map empirical research studies about teaching and learning about the Holocaust. The goal was to sum up what is known presently, and then identify what will be necessary to know for the future. A final conference was held at the PH Luzern University of Teacher Education from 15-16 February 2016. A publication will be released in March 2017.