| Austrian Holocaust Memorial Award | |
|---|---|
| Awarded for | Honoring "those who have shown special endeavors for the memory of the Shoah and / or made special contributions to Jewish life" |
| Country | Austria |
| Presented by | Austrian Service Abroad |
| First awarded | 2006 |
| Website | https://www.auslandsdienst.at/en/ahma/ |
The Austrian Holocaust Memorial Award (AHMA) was founded by the Austrian Service Abroad in 2006.
The prize is annually conferred to a person, a group of individuals or an institution, which has shown special endeavors for the memory of the Shoah and / or made special contributions to Jewish life.
Since 1992 Austria has annually sent young Austrians abroad to serve in form of Gedenkdiener in many places around the world remembering the crimes of Nazism, commemorating its victims and contributing to Jewish life. Example partner institutions are the Auschwitz Jewish Center in Poland, Yad Vashem in Israel, the Simon Wiesenthal Centre in the United States, the Jewish Museum Berlin in Germany, the Jewish Holocaust Centre in Australia, the Russian Research and Educational Holocaust Center in Russia and the Center of Jewish Studies Shanghai in China. The Gedenkdienst service is rooted in the acknowledgment of responsibility by the Republic of Austria for the crimes committed by the Austrian National Socialists. [1]
On October 17, 2006, the Chinese historian Pan Guang was awarded the first AHMA prize. [2] Michael Prochazka and Austrian Servand Abroad of the Year 2006 Martin Wallner attended the reception in Shanghai.
The Brazilian journalist Alberto Dines [3] was crowned as the AHMA 2007 winner on October 24, 2007 at the Austrian consulate in Rio de Janeiro for his effort to establish Casa Stefan Zweig, a museum devoted to Stefan Zweig in Petropolis, and his book Morte no paraíso, a tragédia de Stefan Zweig.
In March 2008, Robert Hébras was assigned with the award at the Austrian embassy in Paris in presence of Beate Klarsfeld and Andreas Maislinger, founder of the Austrian Holocaust Memorial Service and initiator of the AHMA. Robert Hébras is one of only six survivors of the massacre of Oradour and is still giving tours at the age of 84. For 2009 Jay M. Ipson received the Austrian Holocaust Memorial Award. [4] Austrian Ambassador to the United States of America Dr. Christian Prosl visited the Virginia Holocaust Museum and presented the award to the co-founder and Executive Director. Ipson is a Holocaust survivor from Lithuania, who was deported to the Kovno Ghetto at the age of six.
On October 28, 2010, the Austrian ambassador to Australia, Dr. Hannes Porias, conferred the award to the Austrian-born Holocaust survivor Eva Marks in Melbourne and read a letter of congratulations from the president of the Austrian parliament, Barbara Prammer. Also the prime minister of Australia, Julia Gillard, sent a congratulatory letter, conferred by the Australian MP Michael Danby. [5]
On 10 June 1944, four days after D-Day, the village of Oradour-sur-Glane in Haute-Vienne in Nazi-occupied France was destroyed when 643 civilians, including non-combatant men, women, and children, were massacred by a German Waffen-SS company as collective punishment for resistance activity in the area.
Andreas Maislinger is an Austrian historian and political scientist and founder and chairman of the Austrian Service Abroad, including the Gedenkdienst, the Austrian Social Service and the Austrian Peace Service. He also is the founder of the Austrian Holocaust Memorial Award, the Braunau Contemporary History Days and the inventor of the idea of the House of Responsibility regarding the birthplace of Adolf Hitler.
Gedenkdienst is the concept of facing and taking responsibility for the darkest chapters of one's own country's history while ideally being financially supported by one's own country's government to do so. Founded in Austria in 1992 by Andreas Maislinger the Gedenkdienst is an alternative to Austria's compulsory national military service as well as a volunteering platform for Austrians to work in Holocaust- and Jewish culture-related institutions around the world with governmental financial support. In Austria it is also referred to as Austrian Holocaust Memorial Service provided by the Austrian Service Abroad. The Austrian Gedenkdienst serves the remembrance of the crimes of Nazism, commemorates its victims and supports Jewish cultural future. The program is rooted in the acknowledgment of responsibility by the Austrian government for the crimes committed by National Socialism.
The Austrian Service Abroad is a non-profit organization founded by Andreas Hörtnagl, Andreas Maislinger and Michael Prochazka in 1998, which sends young Austrians to work in partner institutions worldwide serving Holocaust commemoration in form of the Gedenkdienst, supporting vulnerable social groups and sustainability initiatives in form of the Austrian Social Service and realizing projects of peace within the framework of the Austrian Peace Service. Its services aim at the permanence of life on earth. The Austrian Service Abroad carries and promotes the idea of the House of Responsibility for the birthplace of Adolf Hitler in Braunau am Inn. The Austrian Service Abroad is the issuer of the annually conferred Austrian Holocaust Memorial Award. The program is funded by the Austrian government.
The House of Responsibility (HRB) in Braunau am Inn is the idea of establishing an international meeting place and a place of learning in the birth house of Adolf Hitler. People from all countries, backgrounds, religions and cultures should meet in order to discuss, learn and develop projects revolving around the concept of responsibility relating to the dimensions of past, present and future. The main demography shall be young people. The idea for a House of Responsibility originates from the founder of the Gedenkdienst and chairman of the Austrian Service Abroad Dr. Andreas Maislinger.
Alberto Dines was a Brazilian journalist and writer.
The Center for Jewish Studies Shanghai was established in 1988. It is a department of the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences. Under the leadership of Dean Professor Pan Guang CJSS has become the most influential research institute in China studying Judaism and Israeli affairs.
The Casa Stefan Zweig is legally regarded as a private charitable organisation, which was founded in 2006 by a group of interested private donors, to establish a writer's house museum, that is dedicated to the author, in the last residence of Stefan Zweig and his wife in Petrópolis (Brazil).
The Action Reconciliation Service for Peace is a German peace organization founded to confront the legacy of Nazism.
The Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum is a museum on the site of the Auschwitz concentration camp in Oświęcim, Poland.
Michael Prochazka is an Austrian social scientist and economist and vice-chairman of the Austrian Service Abroad.
The Melbourne Holocaust Museum (MHM) was founded in Elsternwick, Melbourne, Australia, in 1984 by Holocaust survivors. It is currently Australia’s largest institution dedicated to Holocaust education, research & remembrance. Its mission is to commemorate the six million Jews murdered by the Nazis between 1933 and 1945.
Stefan Jerzy Zweig is an author and cameraman. He is known as the Buchenwald child from the novel by Bruno Apitz, Naked Among Wolves. He survived the Buchenwald concentration camp at age four under protection from his father and other prisoners.
Jay M. Ipson is a Litvak-American Holocaust survivor and co-founder of the Virginia Holocaust Museum in Richmond, Virginia.
Eva Marks was a survivor of the Holocaust and the wife of Stan Marks.
The International Youth Meeting Center in Oświęcim/Auschwitz is an educational institution whose campus lies between the center of the Polish city of Oświęcim and the former German concentration camp of Auschwitz. More than one million persons, mostly Jewish and Polish, were murdered at Auschwitz during the Second World War (1939–1945). Proposed in 1971, the center was opened in 1986 following years of planning, negotiations, and fundraising. It seeks to "develop the understanding of National Socialism and its consequences, particularly among young Germans, through dialogue and encounter between people of different origins", and is particularly engaged with Germans and Poles, Christians and Jews. In 2010, the Center hosted more than 17,000 overnight stays by youth groups participating in its programs. Many young Germans and Austrians have held year-long voluntary positions at the Center that satisfy their civilian service (Zivildienst) responsibility. One of these, Robert Thalheim, wrote and directed the German-language dramatic film And Along Come Tourists (2007) that features the center and its activities.
Hugo Adolf Höllenreiner was a Sinti survivor of the Porajmos during the Nazi dictatorship.
Eva Schloss is an Austrian-English Holocaust survivor, memoirist and stepdaughter of Otto Frank, the father of Margot and diarist Anne Frank. Schloss speaks widely of her family's experiences during the Holocaust and is a participant in the USC Shoah Foundation's Visual History Archive project to record video answers to be used in educational tools.
Edward Mosberg was a Polish-American Holocaust survivor, educator, and philanthropist. During the Holocaust, he was held by the Nazis from 14 years of age in Kraków Ghetto, Kraków-Płaszów concentration camp, Auschwitz concentration camp, Mauthausen concentration camp, and a slave labor camp in Linz, Austria, that was liberated by the US Army in 1945. Nearly all of his family were murdered in the Holocaust.