International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance

The Task Force for International Cooperation on Holocaust Education, Remembrance, and Research (ITF) is an inter-governmental organization established in 1998. The organisation's mandate is founded upon the principles laid out by the Declaration of the Stockholm International Forum on the Holocaust. The stated aims of the ITF are to mobilize and coordinate political and social leaders' support for Holocaust education, remembrance, and research at national and international levels. In 2007, the ITF expanded its thematic mandate to include the genocide of the Roma and other topics, such as genocide prevention and combating anti-Semitism.

Mandate

The work of the ITF is organized into three core thematic areas: education, remembrance and research. In the field of education, the ITF states that it seeks to improve Holocaust education in its member states and beyond, through teacher training programs and curricula development and through the promotion of study trips to former concentration camps and other Holocaust-related sites. With regards to remembrance, the ITF emphasizes the importance of the Holocaust as part of the collective memory of contemporary and future societies, focusing in particular on cultural forms of remembrance and commemoration such as memorials, museums, monuments and historical sites related to the Holocaust, as well as on national Holocaust remembrance days and the UN designated annual international day of commemoration of the Holocaust on 27 January. In the area of research, the ITF aims to facilitate academic research in the field of Holocaust Studies through the opening of Holocaust related archives and the development of international Holocaust research networks.

History

The ITF was founded in 1998 at the initiative of the then Swedish Prime Minister Göran Persson. Following a Swedish survey in 1997 that revealed that many schoolchildren were not convinced about the Holocaust, and affected by his personal experience of visiting the site of the former Neuengamme concentration camp near Hamburg, Prime Minister Persson decided to launch a debate in parliament about Holocaust education in Sweden. This resulted in the Swedish information campaign entitled Levande Historia (Living History). Realising that 'the fight against ignorance about the Holocaust called for an international partnership' Persson also took steps towards establishing an international organization to expand Holocaust education, remembrance, and research worldwide. He wrote to then US President Bill Clinton and UK Prime Minister Tony Blair, asking for their support. The first meeting of the new body took place in May 1998. Holocaust scholar Yehuda Bauer took on the role of academic advisor. In 1998, Germany and Israel joined the initiative, followed in 1999 by the Netherlands, Poland, France and Italy. By 2007, a further sixteen countries had joined. Membership of the ITF today stands at 31 countries, with a further 3 countries as Observer States. The ITF has recently formalised its relations with the Council of Europe.

The Stockholm Declaration

The year 2000 saw a major development in the ITF: the adoption of the Declaration of the Stockholm International Forum on the Holocaust, which serves as the founding document of the organization as an IGO. On January 29, 2000, the Stockholm International Forum on the Holocaust was attended by 23 Heads of State or Prime Ministers, and 14 deputy Prime Ministers or Ministers from 46 governments. Yehuda Bauer was invited to head the academic committee, while Nobel Prize laureate Professor Elie Wiesel was asked to become the Honorary Chairman of the forum. A joint declaration was unanimously adopted. The Stockholm Declaration emphasizes the importance of upholding the "terrible truth of the Holocaust against those who deny it," and of preserving the memory of the Holocaust as a "touchstones in our understanding of the human capacity for good and evil." According to the declaration, it is the responsibility of the international community to combat genocide, ethnic cleansing, racism, anti-Semitism and xenophobia.

Organizational structure

The ITF is an inter-governmental organization consisting of thirty-one Member States and three Observer Countries. Member State delegations are chaired by ambassadors or other officials of a senior rank within the government. Non Governmental Organizations are part of the delegations and nominated by them, serving as their experts. The national delegations convene at biannual Plenary meetings, the first in Spring/Summer, the second in Fall/Winter, taking place in the chairing country. At these meetings the diplomats decide upon the policies recommended for implementation by the Working Groups.

Membership

ITF Member States

Member State	Year Joined	Chairmanship	Name of Chair
Argentina	2002	n/a	n/a
Austria	2001	2008	Ambassador Ferdinand Trauttsmansdorff
Belgium	2005	n/a	n/a
Canada	2009	n/a	n/a
Croatia	2005	n/a	n/a
Czech Republic	2002	2007	Ambassador Milos Pojar
Denmark	2004	n/a	n/a
Estonia	2007	n/a	Aino Lepik von Wirén, Ambassador of the Republic of Estonia to the State of Israel
Finland	2010	n/a	n/a
France	1999	2002	Norbert Engel/Ambassador Patrick Amiot
Germany	1998	2000	Ambassador Albert Spiegel
Greece	2005	n/a	n/a
Hungary	2002	2006	Balint Magyar
Ireland	2011	n/a	n/a
Israel	1998	1999, 2010	Shmuel Ben Shmuel, Dan Tichon
Italy	1999	2004	Ambassador Giorgio Franchetti Pardo
Latvia	2004	n/a	n/a
Lithuania	2002	n/a	n/a
Luxembourg	2003	n/a	n/a
Netherlands	1999	2001, 2011	Ambassador Rienko Wilton/Ambassador Frederick Racke, Ambassador Karel de Beer
Norway	2003	2009	Ambassador Tom Vraalsen
Poland	1999	2005	Daria Nalecz
Romania	2004	n/a	n/a
Serbia	2011	n/a	n/a
Slovakia	2005	n/a	n/a
Slovenia	2011	n/a	n/a
Spain	2008	n/a	n/a
Sweden	1998	2000	Ambassador Ulf Hjertonsson
Switzerland	2004	n/a	n/a
United Kingdom	1998	1999	Ambassador Sir Andrew Burns
United States	1998	2003	Ambassador Randolph Bell/Ambassador Edward O'Donnell Jr.

Membership Criteria

Members States must be committed to the Declaration of the Stockholm International Forum on the Holocaust, and must accept the principles adopted by the Task Force regarding membership. Member States must be committed to the implementation of national policies and programs in support of Holocaust education, remembrance, and research. Countries that are not yet full members of the ITF may participate in the following capacities:

• Observer Country: Country having officially declared its intention to join the Task Force.

• Liaison Country: Former Observer Country in the process of becoming a Member Country.

• Special Guest: Country or NGO temporarily invited by the Chair of the Task Force to participate in the meetings.

• Permanent Observers: International Organizations with the status of observers. They can actively participate in the meetings of the working groups. The Permanent Observers to the ITF include: the Council of Europe; the European Union Fundamental Rights Agency; the OSCE; UNESCO and the United Nations. The Claims Conference, as the preeminent negotiator for indemnification claims on behalf of Jewish victims of the Holocaust, has also been granted Permanent Observer status.

• The ITF also collaborates with a number of affiliated organisations, often NGOs or other institutions selected as expert representatives by the Member States in which they are active.

Liaison and Observer Countries to the ITF

Country	Status
Portugal	Observer
Turkey	Observer
Macedonia	Observer

The official language of the ITF is English.

Rotating Chairmanship

The ITF functions through a system of voluntary chairmanship rotating annually between member states. Each country organizes and pays for the meetings taking place in the year of their chairmanship. The Chair is supported by the Secretariat; the Honorary Chairman (Prof. Yehuda Bauer); the Academic Advisor (currently Steven T. Katz) and the Troika composed of the former chair, the current chair, and the incoming chair. The Netherlands will hold the Chairmanship until March 2012 with Ambassador Karel de Beer as Chairman. Belgium will then assume the Chairmanship for 2012. Canada will take the Chairmanship in 2013.

Secretariat

The Secretariat of the ITF was inaugurated in March 2008 and is based in Berlin. Headed by the Executive Secretary, the Secretariat plays an important role in the coordination of ITF activities by providing advice and assistance to the Chair and Member State delegations, to candidate countries, to the Working Groups, and to project funding applicants. The Secretariat also handles external enquiries and coordinates the day-to-day operations of the organization.

Working Groups

The Task Force has established a number of Working Groups, consisting of government representatives and other experts from each member state who work together to develop ITF policy as well as to assess proposals for project funding. There are four core Working Groups:

Academic Working Group

The Academic Working Group (AWG) was established in 2000. It is concerned with promoting Holocaust research, increasing accessibility to and organizing research into archives; managing academic projects such as the publication and translation of scholarly books; and organizing university-level Holocaust study programs and international conferences of experts. Recently, the AWG was instrumental in opening the International Tracing Service archives in Bad Arolson, which contains some 70 million pages of documents relating to the fate of over 17 million victims of World War II.

Education Working Group

The Education Working Group (EWG) was established in 2001. The EWG provides support and advice on matters of educational best practices; assists with teacher training through existing institutions and new projects initiated by host countries; and makes available the practical expertise of Task Force member states to any partner that requests support in Holocaust-related educational activities. The EWG has established pedagogical guidelines for teaching about the Holocaust in the ITF’s twenty-seven member countries. The EWG has also implemented hundreds of teacher training programs around the world, especially in Eastern Europe.

Memorials and Museums Working Group

The Memorials and Museums Working Group (MMWG) was established in 2002. The MMWG helps to mobilize support and expertise for Holocaust memorials and related places of memory in keeping with the Stockholm Declaration. It collects information on memorials and establishes databases as a foundation for this work. It explores how the preservation of memorials may be ensured in perpetuity; promotes communication and exchange between memorial sites and museums and encourages the use of memorial sites and institutions for professional engagement, training, and development. The MMWG has succeeded in establishing an international network to exchange information, experience and best practices in cultures of remembrance in memorials and museums. This network continues to expand, with plans for annual conferences, workshops and other forms of cooperation. The MMWG has also contributed to the development of two websites established by the Topography of Terror Foundation (Berlin). The website Cultures of Remembrance provides a basis for international dialogue about different forms of remembrance and commemoration. The website Memorial Museums provides an overview of the world’s most important memorials, monuments, museums and other institutions that commemorate the victims of National Socialist persecution. The ITF was also instrumental in campaigning against the destruction of the site of the former Gusen Concentration Camp in Austria, which will now be preserved as a memorial.

Communication Working Group

The Communication Working Group (CWG) provides the public with information about the Task Force and the its projects, as well as on developments in Holocaust education, remembrance, and research worldwide. It also ensures efficient communication among the members of the Task Force and its Working Groups.

Project Funding

The ITF has provided financial support to projects related to its mandate fields. The organisation's current Grant Strategy includes two programmes: 1) Develop strategies for Holocaust Memorial Days in a way that injects substance, real meaning and educational value into these events; and 2) Raise awareness and promote research into the causes of the Holocaust, its driving forces and mechanism, with a view to preventing genocide, ethnic cleansing, racism, antisemitism, and xenophobia. The Grant Programme places an emphasis on multilateral projects, seeking to stimulate the international exchange of expertise and international dialogue.

Controversies

The Norwegian Chairmanship

The ITF has faced criticism from a number of public and academic Jewish groups and personalities in relation to the Norwegian chairmanship of 2009, which coincides with a controversial decision by Norway to launch a year of commemoration of the writer and Nazi sympathiser Knut Hamsun. Dr. Manfred Gerstenfeld, chairman of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, has challenged Norway's chairmanship of the Task Force on the grounds that "this country is unfit to hold such a position when in the same year it has held major memorial activities for the Nazi-admirer Hamsun." On July 20, 2009, the Norwegian chair published a statement rejecting the accusations against it, and promising to continue the ITF's efforts to combat anti-Semitism and promote Holocaust education. In an article for the Jerusalem Post, Yehuda Bauer defended the Norwegian chairmanship, stressing Norway's commitment to Holocaust education, while at the same time acknowledging the continuing presence of anti-Semitism in Norway and elsewhere: 'The arguments against Norway would be more credible if the Norwegians did not admit that there is anti-Semitism in Norway, that they ignored or wanted to bury Hamsun's pro-Nazi stand or that they hampered ITF's work in fighting anti-Semitism in any way. Not only is none of this true, but it was the Norwegian chairman that, before this controversy exploded, insisted on including the fight against anti-Semitism as a central component in the ITF's immediate future program - the proposal was accepted by acclamation.' Bauer also made the point that for Norway, the commemoration of Hamsun also represented an occasion for Holocaust education: 'The Norwegians believe the contrast between the work of a brilliant and universally-acclaimed author, and his personality as a pro-Nazi, is an occasion for educational efforts.'

The ITF and the Vatican

In 2009, the ITF suggested that the Vatican enter into a “special arrangement” with it. The Holy See’s Under Secretary of State, Monsignor Pietro Parolin, answered favorably, suggesting – moreover – that the Vatican become an ITF observer; and negotiations began. Several months later, however, “the Vatican's relatively inexperienced new deputy foreign minister” Monsigniore Ettore Balestrero had replaced Parolin, and together with Vatican Archivist Msgr. Chappin and the Vatican's Israel-relations negotiator Father David Jaeger, the proposal was effectively dismissed.

On 21 December 2010 The Guardian newspaper published a news article based on US diplomatic cables published by Wikileaks about the failure of negotiations:

“All three men… evinced considerable discomfort with the idea of ITF observer status. Balestrero argued that the Vatican needed to study the implications …focusing on legalistic impediments that Parolin had already dismissed. Jaeger was hostile overall …The decision … complicated Vatican foreign relations… the ITF is only the latest group to run into problems caused by the recent change of personnel …”

Julieta Valls Noyes, the number two at the American embassy to the Vatican, reported in October 2009, that the plans "had fallen apart completely … due to Vatican back-pedaling". She thought this might indicate that the Vatican "may ... be pulling back due to concerns about ITF pressure to declassify records from the WWII-era pontificate of Pope Pius XII". As The Guardian article explains, Pius XII has long been a controversial figure for his failure to publicly denounce the Holocaust in 1941-21 when first informed about it. Noyes reported that only six or eight researchers were working on the 16m documents, stored in hundreds of crates, that are left over from Pius XII's papacy. It had earlier taken a team of four Jesuits, working full time, 17 years to produce 12 volumes of his diplomatic correspondence.

External links

• Official website
• Cultures of Remembrance website [10]
• Memorial Museums website [11]