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MEMORIAL AND MUSEUM AUSCHWITZ-BIRKENAU FORMER GERMAN NAZI
CONCENTRATION AND EXTERMINATION CAMP

Members of the IAC (4th Term of Office)

Dariusz Stola - Chairman

Historian, professor of humanities, employee of the Institute of Political Studies of the Polish Academy of Sciences, member of the Centre for Migration Studies at the University of Warsaw. Director of the Museum of the History of Polish Jews POLIN from 2014 to 2019. Member of Academia Europaea since 2024. Member of the third term of the International Auschwitz Council.

Dani Dayan – Deputy Chairman

Dani Dayan is the Chairman of Yad Vashem, the World Holocaust Remembrance Center. Prior to his position at Yad Vashem, he served as Israel's Consul General in New York. Dayan volunteers as the Head of the Advisory Board of Nefesh B'Nefesh and, until his posting in New York, was a member of the Yad Vashem Council.

Piotr Wiślicki - Deputy Chairman

Entrepreneur, Jewish social activist and philanthropist. Member of the Jewish Religious Community in Warsaw since 2001. Since 2009, Vice-Chairman of the Board of the Association of the Jewish Historical Institute in Poland, and since 2011 its Chairman. Member of the Presidium of the International Auschwitz Committee.

Marek Zając – Council Secretary

Journalist and commentator. Graduate of Jagiellonian University in Cracow, specializing in religious and social matters. Chairman of the Auschwitz-Birkenau Foundation Council. 

Colette Avital

Israeli diplomat and politician of Romanian origin, Holocaust Survivor. She was a Knesset Deputy on behalf of the Israeli Labor Party and One Israel (1999-2009) and among others Consul General of Israel in New York. She managed the Centre of Organizations of Holocaust Survivors in Israel. 

Michael Berenbaum

Director of the Sigi Ziering Institute, Professor of Jewish Studies at the American Jewish University, lecturer at Jewish Community Leadership. He was also the executive publisher of the second edition of Encyclopaedia Judaica as well as Project Director supervising the establishment of United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Then he assumed the function of President and CEO of Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation. 

Sara Bloomfield

Director of United States Holocaust Memorial Museum since 1999. Co-founder of National Institute for Holocaust Education as well as Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies. Member of IAC (2006-2012). 

Piotr Cywiński

Director of the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum. Doctor of humanities, medieval historian, graduate of Marc Bloch University in Strasbourg, the Catholic University of Lublin, and the Institute of History of the Polish Academy of Science. 

Director of the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum in Oświęcim since 2006. Vice President of the Warsaw Catholic Intelligentsia Club from 1996-2000, President in the years 2000-2010 and Member of its Board since 1996. Vice President of the Council of the International Center for Education about Auschwitz and the Holocaust (2005-2014). Author of numerous publications about the Holocaust. Member of IAC and its Secretary (2000-2006).

Havi Dreyfus, Ph.D.

Dr Havi Dreyfus (Ben-Sasson) was born on 1972 in Jerusalem, Israel. She graduated with an undergraduate degree, summa cum laude, in psychology and history at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel (HUJI) and completed her Ph.D dissertation entitled “Poland and Poles in the eyes of Polish Jews during the Second World War (1939-1944)” at HUJI in 2005. 

Jan Erik Dubbelman

Retired employee of the Anne Frank House/Stichting in the Netherlands. Since 1982 he has initiated and supervised over 5000 programs and presentations in 85 countries all over the world. 

Andras Heisler

President of the Federation of Jewish Communities in Hungary. Vice President of World Jewish Congress.

Christoph Heubner

He graduated from the Faculties of German Philology, History and Politics in Marburg and Kassel. Writer and poet, he cooperated for many years with the Action Reconciliation for Peace. Co-founder of the International Youth Meeting Center, Vice President of the International Auschwitz Committee. 

Artur Hofman

Born in 1959. Polish activist of the Jewish community in Poland, President of the Social and Cultural Society of Jews in Poland since 2006, editor in chief of the “Słowo Żydowskie” (Jewish Word) monthly magazine, representative of the Jewish minority in the Joint Committee of the Government and National and Ethnic Minorities; Deputy Chairman of the Council of the Museum of the History of Polish Jews POLIN, Member of the Board of the European Jewish Association. 

Tomáš Kraus

Director of the Theresienstadt Initiative Institute. Co-founder of European Shoah Legacy Institute. One of the leaders of the Federation of Jewish Communes in the Czech Republic.  

Roman Kwiatkowski

Co-founder and Chairman of the Roma Association in Poland. Author of cultural and popular science publications, founder of the magazine “Dialog — Pheniben”, member of its editorial board. He is the organizer of annual events commemorating the liquidation of the Roma camp, so called Zigeunerlager at KL Auschwitz-Birkenau.

Ronald Lauder

Chairman of the World Jewish Congress. Founder of the Lauder Foundation. He has supported the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial Site for several decades. Thanks to his support professional conservation workshops were formed within the Memorial. Chairman of the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial Foundation.

Hannah Lessing

Secretary of the National Fund of the Republic of Austria for the Victims of National Socialism. Since May 2001 she has been managing the General Settlement Fund for the Victims of National Socialism and since 2010 the Fund for the Renovation of Jewish Cemeteries in Austria. She took part in negotiations concerning the indemnities within the framework of the Joint Statement signed in Washington in January 2001.

Romani Rose

Roma activist, Chairman of the Central Council of German Sinti and Roma. Thirteen members of his family were murdered in German concentration camps. Together with the chairmen representing other national minorities in Roma, Rose leads the Minority Council established in September 2004.

Cardinal Grzegorz Ryś

Grzegorz Ryś was born in 1964. Metropolitan Archbishop of Łódź. Doctor habilitatus of humanities in the history of the Church, rector of the Higher Theological Seminary of the Kraków Archdiocese between 2007 and 2011. Member of the “Tygodnik Powszechny” editorial team. 

Rabbi Michael Schudrich

Schudrich Michael is the Chief Rabbi of Poland. His mother’s parents, the Roths, came from the village of Baligród. He was born in New York in 1955 as a son of a rabbi. He graduated from State University of New York in Stony Brooks and became a rabbi 1980. Two years later, Schudrich received an MA in History from Columbia University. From 1981 to 1989, he was a Rabbi of Tokyo. In 1990, he started working for Ronald S. Lauder Foundation, whose main goal is to rebuild Jewish identity. In 1992, Schudrich was sent to Poland, staying there to 1998. He came back to this country in June 2000 and served as a Chief Rabbi of Warsaw and Łódź. Rabbi Schudrich has been the Chief Rabbi of Poland since December 8, 2004. He has two citizenships, the American and the Polish one.

Timothy Snyder

Timothy David Snyder was born August 18, 1969. An American historian specializing in the history of Central and Eastern Europe, the Soviet Union, and the Holocaust. He is the Richard C. Levin Professor of History at Yale University and a permanent fellow at the Institute for Human Sciences in Vienna. He has written several books, including Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin, On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century, The Road to Unfreedom, and Our Malady. Several of them have been described as best-sellers. He serves on the Committee on Conscience of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. He is also a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

Marian Turski

Marian Turski (born on June 26th 1926 as Mosze Turbowicz in Druskienniki) — Polish historian, journalist and social activist of Jewish origin, in the years 1956-1957 editor in chief of the "Sztandar Młodych” journal, since 1958 head of the historical department and journalist of the “Polityka” weekly magazine. In the period of German occupation displaced to the Litzmannstadt Ghetto (1942) and then incarcerated at the Auschwitz-Birkenau German Nazi Extermination Camp (1944-1945). Since 2000 member of the International Auschwitz Council, since 2009 Chairman of the Council of the Museum of the History of Polish Jews POLIN in Warsaw; since 2021 Chairman of the International Auschwitz Committee. 

Igor Shchupak

Director of the Ukrainian Holocaust Research Institute "Tkuma", Vice Chancellor of the International Pedagogical Institute "Beit Chana" (Ukraine), member of the Board of Directors of the UJE (Canada), member of the Ukrainian-German Commission of Historians.

Ada Willenberg

Krystyna (Ada) Willenberg (née Lubelczyk) is a widow of Samuel Willenberg who escaped from the extermination camp in Treblinka. Ada Willenberg herself escaped from the Warsaw ghetto. She lives in Israel since 1950. Ada Willenberg is the author of the book "Skok do życia”(A Jump to Life). 

Stanisław Zalewski

Arrested by the Germans at the age of only 18 years, incarcerated at the Auschwitz-Birkenau and Mauthausen camps. He currently holds the function of the President of the Polish Association of Former Prisoners of Nazi Prisons and Concentration Camps. 

In the years 2022-2024, the members of IAC were:

Grzegorz Berendt, Ph.D. - chairman 
Head of the Public Education Office at the Institute of National Remembrance (IPN) in Gdańsk (2008-2013), history lecturer at the University of Gdańsk, member of the Scientific Council of the Jewish Historical Institute, deputy director for Scientific Affairs at the Museum of the Second World War in Gdańsk (2017-2021), director of the Museum of the Second World War in Gdańsk (2022-2024)

Zanet Battinou
Director of the Museum of the History of Greek Jews. Member of the Greek delegation at International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance. The Museum that she manages commemorates among others the tragedy of Greek Jews in the period of German-Italian occupation and the death of Jews deported among others to KL Auschwitz-Birkenau.

Rev. Paweł Gałuszka, Ph.D.
President of the Board of the Foundation of the Center for Dialogue and Prayer in Oświęcim. Ordained to the priesthood in 2007. In the years 2010-2016 he studied at the Lateran University in Rome. The person recommended for IAC by the Archbishop’s Curia in Cracow.

Rabin Szalom Dow Ber Stambler
He was born in Kefar Chabad in Israel and in 2005 he came to Poland together with his family. He established and manages the Chabad Lubawicz Center in Warsaw as well as the Chai Foundation. Together with journalist Filip Memches he wrote the book “Ekonomia w judaizmie” (Economy in Judaism). Rabbi Szalom Dow Ber Stambler is one of the leaders of Jewish community in Poland.

Albert Stankowski - deputy chairman

Member of the Jewish Historical Institute Association in Poland (2011-2015), co-creator of the POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews, former head of the Intangible Heritage Collections Department at POLIN, advisor for Jewish community relations at POLIN, founder and creator of the Virtual Shtetl portal, since 2018, director of the Warsaw Ghetto Museum

Mateusz Szpytma
Vice President of the Institute of National Remembrance (IPN). Graduate of the Jagiellonian Institute. Founder and originator of the Ulma Family Museum of Poles Saving Jews in World War II that he managed in the years 2015-2016. He is the author and co-author of numerous scientific and historical publications.