Chris J. Lazaris
IHRA Chair
Member country since: 2005
Remembrance Days: 27 January (International Holocaust Remembrance Day)
Georgios Polydorakis (Expert Counsellor, Service of Diplomatic and Historical Archives, Hellenic Ministry of Foreign Affairs) – Deputy Head of Delegation
Metropolitan Chrysostomos Savvatos (National and Kapodistrian University of Athens) – Academic Working Group
Zanet Battinou (Director of the Jewish Museum of Greece) – Museums and Memorials Working Group
Vassiliki Keramida (Ministry of Education) – Education Working Group
Paul Isaac Hagouel (University of California, Berkeley) – Academic Working Group
Leon Saltiel (Central Board of Jewish Communities) – Academic Working Group
Georgios Antoniou (Assistant Professor of Jewish Studies, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki) – Education Working Group
Ioannis Mantzas (Pan-Hellenic Confederation of Greek Roma “Ellan Passe”) – Committee on the Genocide of the Roma
Greece and Greek Israelites, in particular, were among the hardest hit by the Nazi onslaught in Europe during World War II. The Holocaust and the appalling loss of life and suffering it entailed still haunt the Greeks’ collective memory to this day; to remember what was done and so that it should never be repeated, Greece has instituted special scholastic programmes, to teach the Holocaust to the younger generations. These have proved among the most successful in Europe, so that Greece is now drawing on this experience to prepare for her own Presidency of the IHRA for 2021-2022. Greece sees the Holocaust experience under a dynamic angle, as a warning and a lesson for the present and the future. Thus, she considers education to be a primary weapon in the fight against Holocaust denial and distortion, and even, as a means of self-defence for Democracies, against any resurgence of forces and self- professed “ideologies” seeking to undermine and attack our common human and moral values and, eventually, our freedom.
Ambassador Chris J. Lazaris