THE HOLOCAUST AND THE UNITED NATIONS OUTREACH PROGRAMME

36
The Holocaust and the United Nations Outreach Programme
activities are financed by the Danish government and organized by
the Danish Institute for International Studies in cooperation with the
Ministry of Education.
One may ask why was it decided to mark Holocaust Remembrance
Day and expose Danish school children to the history of the Holocaust
and other genocides? In answering this question, we need
to view this development as part of a general European trend that
occurred during the 1990s.
Holocaust memory in Europe after 1989
Since the fall of the Berlin wall in 1989, the issue of the Holocaust —
how it is remembered and the influence this memory exerts on the
present — has played an, perhaps unexpectedly, important role in
current European consciousness and politics. Take, for instance, the
many official apologies offered by European Heads of State during
the 1990s — France and the Netherlands in 1995, and Poland in 2001.
Even Denmark, with its sterling record of rescue, apologized officially
in August 2005 for having denied Jewish refugees entry,
sending them back to an uncertain fate in Germany. Add to these
national acts of contrition, the resolution adopted by the European
Parliament in 2005 to preserve the memory of the Holocaust, and
the Stockholm Declaration, signed by the Heads of State and representatives
of 40 countries in January 2000.
The Stockholm Declaration also established certain basic commitments
on the part of its signatories to promote Holocaust education,
remembrance, and research. These national and international efforts
serve as evidence of a general acknowledgement in Europe, and the
rest of the world, that the Holocaust plays a crucial place in European
and national memories.
In this context, Swedish Prime Minister Göran Persson, together
with Tony Blair and Bill Clinton, established the International Task
Force on Holocaust Education Remembrance and Research in 1998,