The Declaration of the Stockholm Forum on the Holocaust (2000) obligates the 31 Member Countries of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) to engage in work that will ensure the permanence of Holocaust commemoration, education, and research. Part of this duty, as outlined in the Declaration’s seventh clause, is for all members to “share a commitment to throw light on the still obscured shadows of the Holocaust” and to “take all necessary steps to facilitate the opening of archives in order to ensure that all documents bearing on the Holocaust are available to researchers.”
The aspirations and intent of this clause remain incomplete owing to innumerable privacy laws and other considerations across IHRA Member Countries, as well as in the many more countries beyond the Alliance. In response to this challenge, the IHRA initiated in 2012 a long-term Multi-Year Work Plan on Archival Access, which was led by a Steering Committee comprised of members from multiple IHRA Working Groups.
This final report builds off the work conducted by the Steering Committee over the course of this work plan, and offers eight recommendations to IHRA Member Countries’ governments that will help ensure access to the record of the Holocaust.
