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Program Council Named for the Center for Education about Auschwitz and the Holocaust
Stefan Wilkanowicz has been named chairman of the Program Board of the International Center for Education about Auschwitz and the Holocaust (ICE) at the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum. Bartosz Bartyzel of the ICE information section said on Thursday that Wilkanowicz and the other nine members of the board were formally appointed by the Polish Ministry of Culture.
Under the statutes of the Auschwitz-Birkenau Museum, the minister of culture appoints board members on the recommendation of the International Auschwitz Council (IAC). Of the ten board members appointed, four come from Poland and six from other countries.
Apart from Wilkanowicz, the board includes Birmingham (UK) University professor Jonathan Webber (deputy chairman), IAC secretary Piotr Cywiński (deputy chairman), Midrasz magazine editor Piotr Paziński, Polish Academy of Sciences scholar Barbara Engelking-Boni, Sons and Daughters of Jewish Deportees from France organization chairman Serge Klarsfeld, Yad Vashem Memorial Institute in Jerusalem Holocaust Teaching School director Motti Shalom, Yad Vashem Polish section director Gideon Greif, Jewish Documentary Center in Milan representative Marcello Pezzetti, and Harriet Lewis, vice chairman of the Grand Circle Corporation in Boston.
Bartyzel said that the council convened for the first time following the appointments. The discussion emphasized above all the importance for the growth of education about Auschwitz and the Holocaust of the fact that the ICE is located in Oświęcim and directly adjacent to the Auschwitz site.
The Polish Minister of Culture formally convoked the ICE in late May. The Foundation Act was signed by more than 150 former Auschwitz prisoners including Professor Władysław Bartoszewski, Simone Veil from France, Mobel Prize winner Elie Wiesel, and Henryk Mandelbaum, the last surviving Sonderkommando member living in Poland. The Sonderkommando was a group of prisoners forced by the Germans to work at extermination in the gas chambers and crematoria.
In the Foundation Act, the former prisoners urge historians, scholars, teachers, and educators to pass on the memory of the victims of Auschwitz and the Holocaust, to enhance their understanding of the mechanisms of hatred and contempt, and to remain vigilant for new threats and to prevent those threats by fostering dialogue and cooperation.
