The Auschwitz Institute for Peace and Reconciliation works to prevent genocide by building a worldwide community of policy makers with the tools and the commitment to respond to conflict before it turns into genocide.
Throughout history, genocide has caused the deaths of more human beings than all the wars and individual murders combined. Given the international community's failures to stop the mass killing of innocent civilians in the 20th and 21st centuries, we believe the best defense is a coalition of government, nonprofit, private, and academic institutions with the knowledge and the capacity to advance peace and social justice, strengthen democratic values, and cooperate across borders to prevent genocide and other forms of violent conflict.
The efforts of the AIPR represent a challenge to the 1934 statement by Albert Einstein — "The brotherhood of the well-intentioned exists even though it is impossible to organize it anywhere" — and we operate two main programs toward this end: the Raphael Lemkin Center for Genocide Prevention and the Raoul Wallenberg Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies.
Background
The establishment of the AIPR was approved unanimously at the 2004 spring meeting of the International Auschwitz Council and the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum. Government, academic, religious, and business leaders have shown strong support for the AIPR since its initial presentation to the public at the 2004 Stockholm Conference.
The AIPR works with leading experts on genocide and genocide prevention from the International Association of Genocide Scholars, the United Nations, the United States Attorney General's Office, and universities around the world. The AIPR acquired legal status in the United States in 2005 and in Poland in 2007.
Raphael Lemkin Center for Genocide Prevention
— Juan Méndez, AIPR Principal Adviser for Policy and Planning; President Emeritus, International Center for Transitional Justice; former UN Special Adviser on the Prevention of Genocide
AIPR established the Raphael Lemkin Genocide Prevention Center, in partnership with the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum, with the aim of building a worldwide community of policy makers dedicated to preventing genocide and other forms of violent conflict. This is achieved through the training of mid-level government officials in the latest strategies in genocide and violent-conflict prevention and intervention in a series of week-long seminars led by top scholars and practitioners, held on the Holocaust site of Auschwitz, Poland.
For more on the Raphael Lemkin Center, click here.
Raoul Wallenberg Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies
The Raoul Wallenberg Center, in partnership with the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum, trains culture and education officials from around the world in the importance of Holocaust memorialization and education and their impact on the prevention of genocide and violent conflict. The training consists of a week-long seminar led by top scholars and educators and takes place on the Holocaust site of Auschwitz, Poland.
For more on the Raoul Wallenberg Center, click here.
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Stockholm Conference 2004 