THE WORK MUST GO ON:
25 YEARS
OF THE STOCKHOLM DECLARATION
IHRA
On 26 January 2000, representatives from nearly 50 governments gathered in Stockholm for a defining moment in international Holocaust remembrance. Survivors sat alongside scholars, and heads of state and government – witnesses to history and those entrusted with its preservation.
The Stockholm International Forum on the Holocaust was the first major international conference of the new millennium – and among the first to bridge the gap between academic expertise and political decision–making. It also marked the first time that governments – regardless of their past – collectively recognized their shared responsibility in ensuring that Holocaust remembrance remained both a political and a moral priority.
The leaders who gathered there understood that memory is not self-sustaining; it must be actively propagated. Twenty-five years on, we look back at the Forum to understand not just what was achieved, but what remains at stake. The commitments made in Stockholm were never meant to be the final word – they marked the beginning of a long-term effort.
The work had only just begun.
The Call to Action
For former Swedish Prime Minister Göran Persson, the Forum was the culmination of a personal reckoning. His call to action had come years earlier. A visit to the former Neuengamme concentration camp, near Hamburg, left Persson deeply unsettled. Walking through the site of forced labor, mass suffering, and systematic brutality, Persson was confronted with the scale of Nazi crimes – and the responsibility of remembering them. Around the same time, far-right extremism was on the rise – young men marching in brown shirts, their chants disturbingly reminiscent of the Nazi era. But the final wake-up call arrived closer to home in 1997, when a survey in Sweden revealed that many schoolchildren doubted the Holocaust had even happened.
Determined to act, Persson launched Living History (Levande Historia), an educational campaign that distributed over 1.3 million copies of the book Tell Ye Your Children to Swedish households. But he quickly realized that education alone was not enough – Holocaust remembrance had to be an international, political commitment.
In April 1998, Persson wrote to US President Bill Clinton and UK Prime Minister Tony Blair, urging them to join him in a global effort to strengthen Holocaust education. They agreed, setting in motion what would become the Stockholm International Forum on the Holocaust.
Setting the Course
By May 1998, representatives from Sweden, UK, and the US met in Stockholm to lay the groundwork for the Forum, and for what would later become the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA).
Among the key figures shaping this initiative was historian late Prof. Yehuda Bauer, who was to become the intellectual architect of the Stockholm Declaration. By the time the Task Force for International Cooperation on Holocaust Education Remembrance and Research (ITF) – the precursor to IHRA – held its first meeting in June 1998, Germany, Israel, and Poland had joined.
In December that year, at the Washington conference on Jewish assets stolen during the Holocaust, these nations took a decisive step, issuing a joint declaration that reaffirmed the urgency of Holocaust education, remembrance, and research.
“Holocaust education, remembrance, and research strengthen humanity’s ability to absorb and learn from the dark lessons of the past, so that we can ensure that similar horrors are never again repeated.” The stage was set for the Stockholm Forum.
Bearing Witness
In January 2000, world leaders – including 23 Heads of State or Government and 14 Deputy Prime Ministers or Ministers – gathered in Stockholm, not just to acknowledge the past, but to commit to how it would be remembered. Among those present was late Elie Wiesel, Holocaust survivor and Nobel laureate. His words hung in the air long after he spoke them: “Not to transmit an experience is to betray it.”
“Not to transmit an experience is to betray it.”
Across the same room was another figure who understood the weight of that responsibility: Hannah Lessing. As Secretary General of Austria’s National Fund for Victims of National Socialism, she had spent years working directly with survivors, ensuring they received restitution and recognition. For her, like many in the room, this work was not abstract. It was deeply personal. The Holocaust had left scars on her own family; her grandmother was murdered in Auschwitz-Birkenau, her great-grandmother starved in Theresienstadt, and her father survived in exile in the British Mandate of Palestine.
This reflection looks back at the 2000 Stockholm Declaration, whose principles have shaped Holocaust education, research, and remembrance globally. While IHRA’s work has since grown to include new focus areas and tools, the Declaration remains a foundational document in building international commitment.
16