Slow start for Shoah center

Just one year after its creation, the European Shoah Legacy Institute (ESLI) has some of its stakeholders concerned that it is progressing too slowly in establishing the necessary infrastructure to carry out its duty of monitoring restitution claims for Holocaust survivors and their families.

Created in January 2010 as part of the Terezín Declaration, the institute has spent much of its first year writing and submitting legal paperwork necessary to operate as an NGO - which its directors admit has consumed a great deal of time. But the resignation of director Lukáš Přibyl at the start of 2011 has sounded the alarm to even some of the center's key foreign partners.

"The sudden resignation of a director barely one year into the life of any organization almost inevitably becomes a cause for concern," said Douglas Davidson, U.S. Special Envoy for Holocaust Issues, who visited ESLI Feb. 1 to look into its progress. "It suggests all is not well with that organization. That may be a false impression when it comes to ESLI ... but I hope the [Czech] Foreign Affairs Ministry continues to take steps, as it has already begun to do, to alleviate this impression."

ESLI receives about 8 million Kč ($454,030) annually from the Foreign Affairs Ministry budget. The United States has pledged to contribute 2.6 million Kč to ESLI's operation.

Despite repeated requests, the Foreign Affairs Ministry did not respond to requests for comment on Davidson's visit or the progress at the ESLI.

Davidson confirmed that much of ESLI's delay in getting underway was tied to the legal paperwork the organization needed to have registered before it could truly begin operation.

"With this out of the way, it's our hope that ESLI can begin to do the things it was created to do, quite soon," he said. "Only [then] will we find out whether the slow start-up is typical of the growing pains experienced by any new organization."

Davidson said the United States would like to see more participation of the EU and its member states as ESLI continues to search for a new full-time director and begins focusing on its role as a crusader for those Holocaust survivors and their descendents who continue to live in poverty without having been properly compensated for land and property confiscated by the Nazis between 1933 and 1945.

Foreign Affairs Minister Karel Schwarzenberg has been vocal in his insistence that EU leaders need to be more active in their support of Holocaust issues. During a recent trip to Israel and Palestine, he told The Jerusalem Post that for many younger European politicians, the Holocaust is receding into the "mist of history."

"World War II and the Holocaust is 65 years ago. Of all my colleagues in the EU, I am the last one who still saw a Yellow Star," he told the paper. "The Holocaust, for those actively involved in politics [in Europe today], is as far away as pre-World War I events."

Davidson said he doesn't believe the "Holocaust fatigue" Schwarzenberg often alludes to is the reason for ESLI's rough first year.

"It is true to say that keeping the lessons and the memory of the Holocaust alive for a new generation probably requires a new way of doing things," he said. "[But] if such fatigue exists, we clearly need to be inventive about overcoming it."

Jack Buehrer can be reached at
jbuehrer@praguepost.com