We regularly comment on current events that overlap with the IHRA's mandate. Statements can come from the IHRA Chair, IHRA Secretary General, or, when consensus is reached among all Member Countries, by the IHRA in the form of an IHRA Statement.
“It was with deep regret that we learned that President Duda of Poland has signed the amendment of the Act on the Institute of National Remembrance into power. Over the last few days, the experts of our Committee on Antisemitism and Holocaust Denial and our Honorary Chairman, Professor Yehuda Bauer, have all raised their voices to underline the right to free and open research and discourse. We are disappointed that their voices, along with so many other diplomats, educators, and academics, were not heeded.
The IHRA community – including Poland – is committed to our founding document, the Stockholm Declaration, which outlines the shared commitment of our Member Countries to encourage the study of the Holocaust in all its dimensions and to uphold its truth against those who would deny it. This amendment challenges Poland’s capacity to honor this Declaration.
We regret that Poland did not keep the IHRA community informed about developments with the amendment, as they had proclaimed before and at the IHRA Plenary Session in Berne on 30 November 2017.
Poland is an essential part of the IHRA and we urge a return to a culture of open discourse on the Holocaust as it occurred in Nazi-occupied Poland. The IHRA will continue to follow this matter closely and we call on the Polish President, the Parliament and the Government to annul this amendment to the legislation which encourages a form of distorted memory of the Holocaust and all associated crimes.”
IHRA Chair
IHRA Honorary Chair
Advisor to the IHRA
Working Group and Committee Chairs of the IHRA
“We, the Committee on Antisemitism and Holocaust Denial of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, wish to express our extreme concern over the recent decision by the Parliament of Poland on 26 January 2018 and the Senate of Poland on 31 January 2018 to pass an amendment to the act on the Institute of National Remembrance. Should the President of Poland sign it into law, this amendment brings with it the possibility of a government-imposed fine or up to a three-year term of imprisonment to persons, both within and outside of Poland, who “ascribe to the Polish People or to the Polish state responsibility or co-responsibility for the Nazi crimes committed by the Third Reich.”
The lack of specificity in this act, particularly in Article 55a.1 through 55a.3 is worrisome. For example, who dictates what or which body will determine if a statement or narrative is in violation of this act? How does one determine if the offense “was committed as part of artistic or scientific activity?” Finally, what constitutes “intentional defamation of Poland”? Empirical research? Statements by political or cultural authorities? Scholarship and student research? The memories of Holocaust survivors or witnesses to the Shoah?
Seen in the light of recent public debates surrounding the history of the Holocaust in Nazi-occupied Poland the imprecision of this amendment has led many to conclude that implementation of this amendment will stifle any discussion, any research, or any publication of works that do not fit popular and comfortable narratives about the past. Forced manipulation of discourse in this manner violates the tenets upon which the international community that Poland and its allies have built over the course of decades. It is also not in keeping with the spirit of the mission of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance – an organization of which Poland has been a member since 1999. By inviting the possibility of punishment for research that considers the Holocaust and associated crimes in all of its facets, this act will lead to the circumscribing of history, which is but one form of Holocaust distortion.
We urge the government of Poland to reject this act as written, to continue engaging in multilateral international dialogue with experts on the Holocaust as it occurred in Nazi-occupied Poland, and to return to a culture of open discourse on the history of this terrible era in our collective experience.”
Committee on Antisemitism and Holocaust Denial
This statement has the support of the current chairs of the following IHRA groups:
Committee on Antisemitism and Holocaust Denial
Committee on the Genocide of the Roma
Committee on Holocaust, Genocide, and Crimes against Humanity
Academic Working Group
Communications Working Group
Education Working Group
Museums and Memorials Working Group
“I would like to comment on the current issue of the IHRA’s attitude to the amendment to Polish legislation, passed by the Polish parliament, relating to the so-called protection of Polish national honor dealing with the Holocaust.
The IHRA’s mission, as defined in the Stockholm Declaration, is to deal with the memory of the Holocaust, and further education and research on the issues connected with that genocide. Poland is committed to the Declaration, and that is the basis of its membership in the IHRA. The legislation under discussion deals, beyond the verbiage, with at least three distinct issues.
One is the opposition to calling the concentration and death camps in Poland in World War II “Polish” camps, which is a justified and obvious demand: these were German camps on occupied Polish soil. There were no Polish guards in those camps, only Polish prisoners and victims. But this is a non-issue: no serious academic or politician or government will object to this Polish demand. The IHRA fully supported the Polish stand on this matter. The Polish government’s insistent repetition of a demand that is accepted by practically all Holocaust Research and Memorial Centers – certainly by all the major centres in Jerusalem, Washington, Amsterdam, Paris (and elsewhere) affiliated with the IHRA – seems to hide the real purpose of the legislation, which is to attack free research on the Holocaust in Poland. I am deeply suspicious of concepts like ‘national honor’, certainly when it applies to whole nations or ethnicities.
The second issue is that the legislation criminalizes anyone who claims that the Polish nation or State was responsible for the crimes perpetrated on Polish soil during the war. This is an odd argument. There could be no act of the Polish nation or State on Polish soil during the war, because Poland was occupied and terrorized by a foreign power. There was an underground anti-German political and military presence which of course could not act as an open government. The Polish government-in-exile had only limited control over the underground. It is true that contrary to other countries, there was no Polish political collaboration with Nazi Germany. This is hardly surprising, because Nazi Germany had no wish to establish or negotiate with any Polish political group – they wanted to eliminate the Polish nationality as such and turn the Polish people into slaves. The ‘national’ pride here is again a non-issue.
The third, and central, point is the question of Polish-Jewish relations on occupied Polish soil during the war. Establishment historians in Poland argue that the Polish people tried to rescue the Jews. There were, they say, huge numbers of Polish rescuers, and the prototypical case is the Ulma family in the small township of Markowa. The Ulmas tried to rescue two Jewish families, were betrayed and were murdered, together with the Jews they had tried to hide. The museum established there presents the Polish nation as a nation of rescuers, which is a blatant lie. It hides the fact that in the villages and small townships around Markowa, peasants went out with pitchforks and clubs to hunt down and kill the Jews who tried to escape, or handed them over to the Polish police who fully collaborated with the Germans, or handed them over to the Germans directly. This was repeated all over the Polish countryside. Polish participation in the murder of Jews was widespread. The rescuers – not 60.000, as some Polish quasi-historians argue, but maybe up to a third of that number or less, out of some 21 or so million ethnic Poles – were real heroes. They had to protect Jews not only from the Germans, but also, in many cases, mainly from their Polish neighbors. Positive attitudes to Jews by an important minority, however, went beyond the rescuers, many helped, and some of the underground movements were friendly to Jews. Most were not. But no Jew in Poland could survive without some help from Poles.
It is this complicated reality that is the subject under discussion. The legislation is designed to make research of this difficult and complicated subject impossible: it supposedly protects scientific and artistic works from criminalization. But who determines what such works are? What about an investigative journalist? An aspiring but not (yet?) recognized artist? Or a tourist guide explaining how the local population gleefully robbed the property of the Jews as they were being herded to be murdered? Or a simple B.A. student writing a seminar paper and asking for material at an archive – when they submit their paper, will they then serve 3 years in jail because they found that a group of villagers murdered their Jewish neighbors? I guess they will prefer not to write the paper. In such an atmosphere there can be no free research or publication. It is an authoritarian, illiberal, climate. It is opposed, openly and courageously, by wonderful Polish historians, mainly but not solely around the Polish Center for Holocaust Research, with such prominent professors as Barbara Engelking, Dariusz Libionka and many others. They published a declaration of their own on January 28 of this year (actually a re-publication of a very strong opposition to the legislation in 2016). The governmental policy is also opposed by the director of POLIN, the museum of Polish Jewry in Warsaw.
The IHRA should demand, with all possible force, that this kind of legislation be annulled. It cannot be recognized by any civilized society. Poland is an essential part of the IHRA, and the relations within the IHRA with Polish colleagues have been, at all times, absolutely excellent. But the Polish government must make up its mind: for freedom of inquiry, research, publication, the right to err as well as the right to be right, or against it, and that means against the Stockholm Declaration and against the IHRA.”
Professor Yehuda Bauer, Honorary Chairman to the IHRA
“It was with great concern that I took note of the amendment to the legislation adopted by the lower house of the Polish Parliament on the eve of UN-mandated International Holocaust Remembrance Day.
As Chair of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, I underline our member countries’ commitment to our founding document, the Stockholm Declaration:
“Together we must uphold the terrible truth of the Holocaust against those who deny it … We share a commitment to encourage the study of the Holocaust in all its dimensions.”
It is in light of this commitment that the IHRA spoke out about the incorrect use of the term “Polish Death Camps” and why we also affirm the reality of local collaboration in some of the atrocities of the Holocaust. We emphasize the right to free and open research and discourse based on those findings, including the memoirs and testimonies of those who experienced the Holocaust directly.
We call upon Poland – a long-standing member of the IHRA – to consider the full implications of the final adoption of the amended legislation and to reject any move that imperils the free and open study, education and discourse connected to the Holocaust. The IHRA community stands ready to work with Poland to achieve those goals.”
IHRA Chair, Ambassador Benno Bättig
The International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance unites governments and experts to strengthen, advance and promote Holocaust education, research and remembrance and to uphold the commitments to the 2000 Stockholm Declaration.
IHRA Honorary Chairman, Professor Yehuda Bauer, has issued the following statement: “The ‘Unite the Right’ rally which took place in Charlottesville last week, in which counter-protester Heather Heyer was murdered, not only leaves a stain on America but is also a timely reminder of the perpetual need to combat the twisted ideology of the far-right everywhere it appears.
The Holocaust remains an event close enough in time that survivors can still bear witness to the horrors that engulfed the Jewish people and to the terrible suffering of the many millions of other victims of the Nazis. I therefore recoil at the sight of the symbols of Nazi-hatred being used to drive apart communities and as tools to express the supremacy of one people over another. The violent, antisemitic and racist statements and acts of those associated with ‘Unite the Right’ have no place in any society. I strongly condemn the implication of posthumously honouring the perpetrators of the Holocaust.
As Honorary Chairman of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, a unique organization which unites governments and experts to strengthen, advance and promote Holocaust education, remembrance and research worldwide, I call on the international community to strongly condemn these messages of hatred and discrimination and to unite in action against them.”
-IHRA Honorary Chairman, Professor Yehuda Bauer
The International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance unites governments and experts to strengthen, advance and promote Holocaust education, remembrance and research worldwide and to uphold the commitments of the 2000 Stockholm Declaration.
“In recognition of the Stockholm Declaration (2000) commitment to ‘uphold the terrible truth of the Holocaust’ (defined as the mass murder of Jewry by the Nazis and their allies) against denial and distortion, and in acknowledgement of the extermination of the Jews by the Nazis and their accomplices during World War II, the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) wishes to state that it shares the Polish government’s opposition to the historically unsupportable use of the terms “Polish Death Camps” or “Polish Camps” to refer to the camps and sites of persecution and murder established by Nazi Germany on invaded and occupied Polish soil. We strongly urge our members to stop using this term in discourse and in publications, and we encourage others to stop using it as well.”
“As Honorary Chairman of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA), with its 31 Member Countries and eleven Observer Countries, I was extremely surprised that in the statement issued on behalf of President Trump on International Holocaust Memorial Day (January 27), the Holocaust was interpreted in a deeply erroneous way, and no specific mention was made of Jews or of antisemitism, which motivated the Holocaust.
All IHRA Member Countries, including the USA, one of the founders, are committed to the 2000 Stockholm Declaration which defines the Holocaust as the genocide of the Jews in World War II, in line with repeated US statements, and not as a term that includes all the horrors committed by Nazi Germany, claiming millions of innocent victims aside from the Holocaust.
We recognize the unprecedented policy of total annihilation aimed at the Jewish people. However, the Jews are not even mentioned in the Presidential statement, thus gratuitously violating the memory of the murdered millions. On the same day, an Executive Order was issued by the President’s office, banning refugees from entering the US, singling out persons from mainly Muslim countries. This constitutes, in effect, discrimination on religious grounds, violating the Refugee Convention of 1951, of which the US is a signatory. It raises possible troubling parallels with the refusal of most countries during the Nazi period to accept refugees, especially Jewish ones.
The IHRA is committed to supporting governments in commemorating the Holocaust, and in supporting activities that lead to a culture of remembrance, aimed at a better future for all.
I am hopeful that all IHRA Member Countries, including the US, will work together with other international actors to speak out against any abuse of fundamental human rights, by anyone, anywhere. I wish to mention the Statement of the Global Centre for Responsibility to Protect, among others; we are engaged in a common effort to honor the memory of the victims, of the rescuers, and support those committed to speaking the truth about the past.”
Professor Yehuda Bauer, IHRA Honorary Chairman
The International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance unites governments and experts to shape and advance Holocaust education, remembrance and research world-wide, to speak out on Holocaust related issues including antisemitism, and to uphold the commitments of the 2000 Stockholm Declaration.
On the occasion of International Holocaust Remembrance Day, the Chair of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, Ambassador Mihnea Constantinescu, and the Director of the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights, Mr Michael O’Flaherty, issue a joint statement on the importance of educating for the future through learning from the past.
The rising tide of intolerance spreading across Europe demonstrates the vulnerability of human rights and the need to be ever vigilant in their protection. On the eve of International Holocaust Remembrance Day on 27 January, the EU Agency for Fundamental Rights (FRA) and the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) call for greater efforts to acknowledge and reflect on the horrors of the past and to stand up against all forms of xenophobia and intolerance.
“I am very worried about the increasing prevalence of intolerance and acts of hatred around Europe,” said FRA Director Michael O’Flaherty. “To forget the victims of the Holocaust would be to dishonour them. At the same time, a keen sensitivity to the past can be harnessed for the present. This appalling episode in human history demonstrates the non-negotiable need for respect and tolerance across our societies today.”
“It is important to remember that the Holocaust did not begin with murder – it began with words and progressed to the denigration of fundamental rights, culminating in genocide. This is why the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance feel so strongly about combating all forms of hate speech, including antisemitism. Hate speech does not respect national borders so we stand united with our international partners, including the EU Agency for Fundamental Rights, to tackle this scourge at the roots,” said Ambassador Mihnea Constantinescu, Chair of the IHRA.
In the wake of the Second World War and the terrible tragedy of the Holocaust, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was developed as a comprehensive corpus of rights to which everyone is entitled on the basis of the humanity we all share. The rights set out in the Universal Declaration subsequently evolved further in international treaties, national constitutions, policies and laws.
However, despite the strong international and European human rights framework, we are witnessing massive backsliding on human rights commitments in many places. This makes it all the more important to fight Holocaust denial and distortion, and to learn from the past in order to ensure future generations in Europe are not confronted with the horrors of war and genocide.
The Fundamental Rights Agency is one of the IHRA’s seven permanent international partners. Together, we are committed to honouring the victims of the Holocaust and raising awareness of the past today in order to prevent the fundamental rights violations of the future. The Holocaust shows us the potential consequences of policies that deprive people of their fundamental rights and trample on human dignity. Holocaust and human rights education can therefore teach us much about the role of remembrance and good citizenship, which is so needed today.
