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. Several on-going working groups have been established within the ITF that focus on various aspects of education, remembrance, and research in relation to the Holocaust, the genocide of the Roma and other topics, such as genocide prevention and combating anti-Semitism. These working groups make recommendations for policy development, produce practical guidelines for implementation, and assess and award funding to project proposals submitted to the ITF.

Mandate

The work of the ITF is organized into three core thematic areas: education, remembrance and research. These three strands are represented in its main Working Groups. In the field of education, the ITF 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 remembrance day on 27 January. . Under the research strand of its work, 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. Alarmed at the results of a poll conducted among Swedish high school students which seemed to show a lack of knowledge about the Holocaust, as well as at the re-occurrence of genocide in different parts of the world since 1945, and affected by his personal experience of visiting the former Nazi Concentration camp at Neuengamme, near Hamburg, Prime Minister Persson took the first steps towards the establishment of an international organization to expand Holocaust education worldwide. He wrote to then President of the USA 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 was asked to take 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 27 countries, with a further 7 countries as Liaision or Observer States.

The Stockholm Declaration

A major step in the history of the organization was the adoption of the Declaration of the Stockholm International Forum on the Holocaust, which serves as the founding document of the ITF. 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 ‘touchstones in our understanding of the human capacity for good and evil.’ According to the declaration, it is the ‘solemn 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 twenty-seven Member States, two Liaison Countries and five Observer Countries. Member State delegations are chaired by ambassadors or 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 bi-annual 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	Ferdinand Trauttsmansdorff
Belgium	2005	n/a	n/a
Canada	2009	n/a	n/a
Croatia	2005	n/a	n/a
Czech Republic	2002	2007	Milos Pojar
Denmark	2004	n/a	n/a
Estonia	2007	n/a	n/a
France	1999	2002	Norbert Engel/Patrick Amiot
Germany	1998	2000	Albert Spiegel
Greece	2005	n/a	n/a
Hungary	2002	2006	Balint Magyar
Israel	1998	1999	Ben Shmuel
Italy	1999	2004	Giorgio Franchetti Pardo
Latvia	2004	n/a	n/a
Lithuania	2002	n/a	n/a
Luxembourg	2003	n/a	n/a
Netherlands	1999	2001	Rienko Wilton/Frederick Racke
Norway	2003	2009	Tom Vraalson
Poland	1999	2005	Daria Nalecz
Romania	2004	n/a	n/a
Slovakia	2005	n/a	n/a
Spain	2008	n/a	n/a
Sweden	1998	2000	Ulf Hjertonsson
Switzerland	2004	n/a	n/a
United Kingdom	1998	1999	Jeremy Cresswell
United States	1998	2003	Randolph Bell/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 pay a yearly contribution to the ITF Fund of EUR 30,000. (Germany pays an additional contribution of EUR 150,000 to support the Permanent Secretariat in Berlin.) Member States must be committed to the implementation of national policies and programs in support of Holocaust education, remembrance, and research. The ITF will only accept countries commonly seen as democracies (i.e. not countries with authoritarian, dictatorial, or totalitarian regimes) to full membership. However, other countries may be encouraged to develop projects in cooperation with the ITF, or agree to such projects with local NGOs. 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 Agency for Fundamental Rights; the OSCE and the United Nations.

• 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
Finland	Liaison
Macedonia	Observer
Ireland	Liaison
Portugal	Observer
Serbia	Observer
Slovenia	Observer
Turkey	Observer

The official language of the ITF is English.

Rotating Chairmanship

Like many inter-governmental organizations, 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 Executive Secretary at the Permanent Office; the Honorary Chairman (currently Prof. Yehuda Bauer); the Academic Advisor (currently Prof. Dina Porat) and the so-called ‘Troika’ – a panel comprising the former chair, the current chair, and the incoming chair. Norway holds the chairmanship for 2009, with Tom Vraalson as Chair. Israel will take the chairmanship in 2010.

Permanent Secretariat

The Permanent 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; to the Academic Advisor and Honorary Chairman and to project funding applicants. The permanent office also deals with media and other external enquiries.

Working Groups

The Task Force has established a number of Working Groups, consisting of government representatives and 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 WGs:

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 Archives in Bad Arolson, which contains some 70 million pages of documents relating to the fate of over 17 million victims of WWII.

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.

Memorial and Museums Working Group

The Memorial 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 Museumsprovides an overview of the world’s most important memorials, monuments, museums and other institutions that commemorate the victims of National Socialist persecution.

Communications Working Group

The Communications Working Group (CWG) provides the public information about the Task Force and the Task Force's projects, as well as information 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 ITF supports in particular projects from institutions and organizations located in regions or countries where Holocaust education, remembrance, and research face severe resource constraints. It also supports bilateral and multilateral projects that work towards the organization’s aim to further Holocaust education, remembrance and research by stimulating the international exchange of expertise and international dialogue. Due to the ongoing restructuring of procedures with regard to processing applications for project funding, the ITF Permanent Office has suspended the acceptance of any new Project Proposal Applications (PPA) for the time being. The resumption of accepting and processing new proposals is expected to begin in 2010.

External links

• Cultures of Remembrance [1]
• Memorial Museums [2]