Austrian Federal Chancellery (11/17/2008)

Vienna: Council of Europe and Holocaust Task Force will cooperate

The Council of Europe and the International Holocaust Task Force (ITF) signed a declaration of intent to team up in the combat against anti-Semitism at European level on 10 November 2008. Terry Davis, Secretary-General of the Council of Europe, and Ferdinand Trauttmannsdorff, ITF Chairman, signed the agreement that is to become a model for Europe.

According to Trauttmannsdorff, the negotiations would start still this year as Austria was holding the ITF chair. First concrete results were expected by 2010. Davis mentioned a planned campaign against racism in key media at European level, which was to be more focused than the campaigns of the past years. As Hans Winkler, Secretary of State in the Foreign Ministry, explained, there was a “moral duty to ensure that future generations understand the causes of the Holocaust and reflect on the consequences“.
Moreover, Terry Davis was awarded the Grand Golden Medal of Honour with Ribbon for Meritorious Service to the Republic of Austria in Vienna on 10 November 2008 by Federal Chancellor Alfred Gusenbauer. “He has contributed decisively to the success of the Council of Europe in promoting its goals on our continent”. The Council of Europe provided an all-European institutional framework for the further development of democracy and the rule of law as well as the protection of human rights.

In the night from 9 to 10 November 1938 pogroms against Jewish citizens had taken place in all regions occupied by the Nazis. In Austria alone 30 Jews were killed, 7,800 were arrested and about 4,000 were deported immediately from Vienna to the Dachau concentration camp. The pogroms are considered by many historians as the beginning of the Shoa, the systematic annihilation of the Jewish population.