Salzburg Global Initiative Recommendations Presented to International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance
Klaus Mueller, Chair of the Salzburg Global Initiative on Holocaust Education and Genocide Prevention attended IHRA meeting in Manchester, UK
Klaus Mueller (left), Chair of the Salzburg Initiative on Holocaust Education and Genocide Prevention, at the IHRA meeting Recommendations of the
Salzburg Global Initiative on Holocaust Education and Genocide Prevention have been well received by participants at the latest meeting of the
International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA).The meeting, held in December in Manchester, UK, was attended by Klaus Mueller, chair of the Salzburg Global Initiative on Holocaust Education and Genocide Prevention, a joint initiative of the
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM) and Salzburg Global, whereat he presented the recommendations made by Salzburg Global Fellows during the symposium
Holocaust and Genocide Education: Sharing Experience Across Borders held in June in Salzburg.That symposium brought together predominantly non-Western participants from 29 countries outside the framework of the current IHRA member states. During the symposium, participants reviewed the 2010 IHRA guidelines on Holocaust and other genocides, and developed recommendations from a more global perspective,
as outlined in the 2014 session report. Mueller’s presentation on these recommendations to such a large transnational forum provided a unique opportunity to engage colleagues from around the world. IHRA, an intergovernmental network of currently 31 nations from Europe, North America, Israel and Argentina, supports the need for Holocaust education, remembrance and research both nationally and internationally, and has been a main supporter of the Salzburg Global Initiative. As part of the US delegation to IHRA, Mueller joined, among other meetings, the first gathering of a new IHRA Committee on Holocaust, Genocide and Crimes Against Humanity. The committee – which addresses the growing engagement of Holocaust institutions and memorials in education and remembrance activities on other genocides – invited Mueller to present the outcomes of the June 2014 Salzburg symposium. The IHRA committee delegates took the Salzburg recommendations very seriously and used them as a point of departure to review and further develop the IHRA guidelines on Holocaust and other genocides, thus integrating the recommendations of the joint USHMM-Salzburg Global Initiative as an outside expert perspective. Among other themes, the Committee members discussed as a follow-up to the recommendations from our 2014 Salzburg participants:
- Making the guidelines more practical for educators and teachers through lesson plans;
- Creating a feedback mechanism to understand guidelines as a working document;
- Working on a draft paper on the use of language within the IHRA guidelines guided by the Salzburg recommendations;
- Reflecting on the global use of the IHRA guidelines.
The current IHRA chair Sir Andrew Burns from the United Kingdom (who attended the 2014 Salzburg session) and Michael Haider from the Austrian Foreign Office (which has been a key funder from the beginning of the Initiative since 2010) were informed about the session outcomes in separate dialogues hosted by Mueller.
