When governments learn from history - and when they don't

"Within Holocaust Studies, Denmark is well known for having helped the majority of the Jewish population to escape to Sweden in what is considered a unique rescue operation during October 1943. What is less well known is that Denmark conducted a restrictive refugee policy towards German Jewish refugees during the 1930s. And like several other European states, Denmark failed to recognize the dimensions of the anti-Jewish policy of Nazi-Germany when it was being implemented, just as states failed to find a solution to this refugee problem when they met during the summer of 1938 in Evian," said Senior Researcher Cecilie Felicia Stokholm Banke in her remarks at a briefing for NGOs on January 28 during the marking of the international Holocaust remembrance day at the UN.

"It is difficult not to see a similarity between how states did not manage to find a solution at the conference in Evian back then just like states today are unable to find common ground of how to respond to the thousands of refugees fleeing ISIS and war in Syria. Again, we have to learn from past mistakes in order not to repeat them", Banke said.

"For me as a scholar within the field of Holocaust and genocide studies, I am interested in what makes governments to act and intervene to stop persecution, ethnic cleansing, war crimes and mass violence. Why is it that states could agree to intervene in Kosovo in 1999 while later it became so much more difficult? What was the context then as opposed to the one now?"

Read the discussion paper written by Cecilie Felicia Stokholm Banke for the UN Outreach Program.

The briefing brought together experts from academic institutions and international organizations, researchers, educators and authors who examined current trends in Holocaust research and education.

The panellists included Szabolcs Takács, Chair of IHRA, International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance; Debórah Dwork, Rose Professor of Holocaust History and Director, Strassler Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies, Clark University; Professor Zehavit Gros, Chairholder, UNESCO/Burg Chair in Education for Human Values, Tolerance and Peace, Bar-llan University; and Jane Jacobs-Kimmelman, Director of the International Relations Department at the International School for Holocaust Studies at Yad Vashem. The discussion was moderated by Kimberly Mann, the Chief of the Education Outreach Section in the Outreach Division of the United Nations Department of Public Information.  

Watch the webcast from the Holocaust Memorial Ceremony in the General Assembly Hall on January 27, where among others Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon spoke together with Mogens Lykketoft, President of the seventieth session of the General Assembly; H.E. Ms. Samantha Power, Permanent Representative of the United States to the United Nations and H.E. Mr. Felix Klein, Special Representative for relations with Jewish Organizations, issues relating to Anti-Semitism and Holocaust Remembrance,