History of the ITF
The International Task Force for International Cooperation on Holocaust Education, Remembrance and Research was initiated by former Swedish Prime Minister, Göran Persson, in May 1998.
Mr. Persson was motivated, it seems, by a number of factors. One of them was his personal experience of visiting the site of the former Nazi concentration camp at Neuengamme, near Hamburg, and reading about the Jewish children who were murdered there. Another was the result of a poll conducted among high-school children in Sweden, which seemed to show a lessened commitment to democratic values and the spread of doubts whether the genocide of the Jews in World War Two actually happened.
As a consequence, Mr. Persson tasked a Minister in his government, Mr. Tage Petersen, to investigate the situation in Swedish education, and make suggestions. Professor Yehuda Bauer, one of the leading experts on the history of the Holocaust and its implications, was consulted. A delegation of Swedish educators and Foreign Office personnel then visited Israel in order to learn from the experience there.
The result was a decision by the Swedish government to set up a special organisation, the Levande Historia - Living History, to disseminate education about the Holocaust in the Swedish educational system. A small book, "Tell Ye Your Children", was written by Stéphane Bruchfeld and Paul A. Levine, successfully compressing the history of the Holocaust into some 80 pages. This was distributed - by request - to a huge number of Swedish households. The book was subsequently adopted for educational use in the ITF member states of Denmark, Estonia, France, Germany (5 Länder), Latvia and Norway.
At the same time, the idea was conceived to establish an international organisation that would expand Holocaust education worldwide. Prime Minister Persson wrote to President Bill Clinton and former British Prime Minister Tony Blair to join him in this venture, and received positive answers. The then Director-General of the Swedish Foreign Office, Ulf Hjertonsson, was the person responsible, and Yehuda Bauer became the Academic Adviser. A first meeting of the new body took place in May, 1998. Professor Bauer immediately asked the Swedish government to invite Germany, Israel and Poland to join, as he thought that without them any international effort at Holocaust education was unthinkable. Germany and Israel joined in 1998, and the Netherlands, Poland, France, and Italy did so in 1999. By 2007, another sixteen countries had joined.
In the meantime, Mr. Persson developed the idea of an international Forum of interested governments to discuss Holocaust education; a Swedish governmental committee was appointed to organise the Forum, and Yehuda Bauer was invited to head the academic committee. Professor Elie Wiesel, the Nobel prize laureate, was asked to become the Honorary Chairman of the conference. The Forum (as it was known) took place in Stockholm on January 27th-29th 2000, and was attended by 23 Heads of State or Prime Ministers, and 14 Deputy Prime Ministers or Ministers from 46 governments. A joint declaration was prepared, circulated in advance and, after some minor changes, was unanimously adopted.
This, the Stockholm Declaration, is the foundation of the ITF. It explains the Holocaust and by adding the Hebrew term "Shoah", in brackets after the word "Holocaust", makes clear that the main concern of the ITF is to teach about, remember and research the genocide of the Jewish people in World War Two. It then goes on to say that Nazi Germany also perpetrated a number of other major crimes, thus contextualising the Holocaust. This opens up the opportunity for the ITF to also deal with the genocide of the Roma, which took place at the same time and at the same or similar locations, and was committed largely by the same perpetrators.
The Declaration then demands the opening of all archives containing material related to World War Two and the Holocaust, a strategy against Holocaust denial which the declaration condemns in no uncertain terms. The major context of the Holocaust, namely genocide in general, was pointed out as well, the Holocaust being its most extreme example.
Governments were asked to establish annual memorial meetings and activities designed to remember the Holocaust. Ever since the 2000 Forum, it's been essential for states wishing to join the ITF to commit to the Stockholm Declaration.
Another basic principle developed over the last ten years is the demand made of all member governments to examine their own past history regarding actions or inaction during the Holocaust. It can be said without any exaggeration that nobody comes out clean in considering their past, and without social, collective, self-criticism it is hypocritical to indulge in public declarations and statements decrying the Holocaust. Governments that are not willing to engage seriously in this self-examination cannot be members of the ITF. The ITF plenary hears two national reports at each of its meetings, which present in detail the countries' efforts to examine themselves.
From its inception, the ITF has been working according to the principle of consensus, avoiding votes, and trying to bridge over differences by discussion and compromise. Despite its phenomenal growth, it has managed to keep to this way of working and indeed the plenaries serve as a venue for expressing various, even contradictory, opinions in an atmosphere which allows for an open exchange of ideas.
The governments provide a political umbrella, through their delegations, for the educational and other efforts of the ITF, and most of the work is carried out by experts, educational and others, who are organised into 4 Working Groups.
Every participating government has to pay in €30,000 per year. This fund is maintained and administered in Stockholm by the Swedish government. This enables the ITF to maintain an office, with a highly qualified Executive Secretary; and to support grant proposals for external projects financially. The government of Germany has agreed to host the Secretariat in Berlin, covering part of the expenses, while the other part is paid by the ITF Fund. Currently, the Executive Secretary is Dr. Kathrin Meyer, formerly Adviser on Antisemitism and Holocaust Issues at the OSCE's Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (before her, Mr. Karel Fracapane fulfilled that function for five years). Grant proposals can be submitted by bodies and institutions from inside and outside the ITF, and are reviewed by subcommittees nominated by the Chairs of the respective WGs. Only up to 50% of any proposal can be financed by the ITF. In addition, initiatives from the WGs themselves can be considered.
Since 2001 the ITF has received 369 grant proposals and funded 221 of them. The main emphasis has been on teachers' seminars, but curricular developments, and other means of education, commemoration and research have also been supported. It is difficult to estimate the effect of all these efforts especially on the young people who are the target of the ITF's work, because the time that has elapsed - effectively, the last five or six years at most - is too short to arrive at definite conclusions. However, the impressions are overwhelmingly positive. The ITF is also in the process of developing its website - an essential tool in spreading its message.
The ITF has developed its own institutions, consensually, after debates and sometimes controversies. Chairmanship rotates yearly, from government to government, and the Chair is responsible for the overall activities of the ITF. Two plenary meetings of governmental delegations, including diplomats and experts, are held each year, and these meetings are prepared by a special plenary preparation committee that meets a month ahead of the plenary. The day before the plenary, or early on the same day, heads of delegations meet for a last round of discussions before the plenary meeting.
Parallel to this, an Academic Advisory Committee (AAC), chaired by the Academic Adviser and comprising the Chairs of the WGs - which also rotate - meets to discuss the work the ITF engages in. The basic principle, which however is flexible, is that the special plenary preparation committee discusses structure and procedures, and the AAC discusses content. As the Chairs of the WGs participate in the special plenary preparation committee and the Chair and the Secretary participate at the AAC, a balance is sought, not unsuccessfully, between the diplomats and the experts. This may sound cumbersome, but up till now at least it has been possible to maintain consensus based on these discussions, and a great deal of work has been accomplished on many fronts.
In 2005, Yehuda Bauer resigned his position of Academic Adviser, and Professor Dina Porat, the Head of the Stephen Roth Institute for the Study of Contemporary Antisemitism and Racism at Tel Aviv University, took his place. Professor Bauer was nominated to be the Honorary Chairman of the ITF.
A major breakthrough was achieved with the 2005 decision of the General Assembly of the UN to commemorate the Holocaust on every January 27th (the day on which, in 1945, Auschwitz was liberated by the Soviet Red Army), and to engage in education about it the world over. As a result, the UN became a permanent observer to the ITF, together with other international and inter-governmental organisations, cooperating and collaborating with the ITF. There is also the prospect of a broader engagement of non-ITF countries to deal with the topic, usually in the context of work to prevent mass atrocities generally. One more result was a committee established within the ITF to promote the implementation of the UN decision regarding the commemoration of the Holocaust in the member countries on that date.
Originally, the ITF was intended as a short-lived group of governments supporting educational and other efforts relating to the Shoah of the Jewish people. It has now grown to be a permanent major organisation. There are more governments seeking membership, and this is both a blessing and a problem. The ITF only accepts democratic governments for membership, and procedures have been developed with conditions that have to be fulfilled in order to join. These and other organisational procedures can be studied by visiting the ITF website. Another unintended but major result of the work of the ITF has been much closer cooperation between the major institutions commemorating and teaching about the Holocaust, such as Yad Vashem in Israel, the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC, the Auschwitz Museum at Oswiecim, the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam, the Terezin Pamatnik in the Czech Republic, the Memorial de la Shoah in Paris, and others; parallel to this, hundreds of teachers and other experts have got to know, appreciate, and learn from each other.
The question is - where is the ITF going, and what are the prospects for successful work? It seems that there is a good chance - but no guarantee, of course, that the Holocaust, the paradigmatic genocide, will serve as a warning to all societies. We hope that organisations such as the ITF can fulfill a major role in spreading education, both on a cognitive and on an emotional and moral basis, among larger and larger audiences. There are obstacles that have to be overcome: fatigue in dealing with the topic, political problems, educational issues, and others. But if people are permitted to forget the warning, the danger that genocides such as the Holocaust can be repeated, will inevitably grow. The ITF is dedicated to prevent this.
