Assumption of the IHRA Presidency

We share the message of Holocaust survivor Monica Dawidowicz, in the context of the IHRA 2026 presidency handover ceremony

It is a great honor for me to take on a responsibility, a challenge as significant as serving as Chair of the IHRA this year.

First and foremost, I would like to thank all the delegations that made this dream come true by approving Argentina’s candidacy.

I cannot thank President Javier Milei enough for honoring me with this appointment, which will undoubtedly be one of my greatest responsibilities as community leader.

I wish to thank again Foreign Minister Pablo Quirno for the dedication with which the Ministry of Foreign Affairs has undertaken this challenge. 

I would like to extend my special thanks to Ambassador Fabiana Loguzzo, whom I have asked to be my co-Chair, and, through her, to the entire Argentine Presidency team and the organizations that make up the local chapter for all their work.

I also wish to thank Dani Dayan, who welcomed me heartily in Jerusalem back in December, and the entire Israeli Presidency team for their outstanding work under such difficult circumstances as carrying out this task while facing a war. A special note of appreciation goes to Secretary General Michaela Küchler for all the work we have already begun together in preparation for this new Presidency.

As has already been said, our chosen motto is “Expanding the Frontiers of Remembrance.” As I stated in Jerusalem, one of the objectives of this Presidency is to build bridges between the IHRA and our vast Latin American region, where we are currently the only full member.

We therefore see this responsibility as an opportunity to bring a new and representative perspective from other nations that did not have a direct or close connection to the Final Solution, but that nonetheless should make their contribution to building local memories that incorporate that tragedy as a source of lessons to improve our societies.

Our country was among the first in the world to build a monument to the victims of the Shoah, erected in the Jewish cemetery of La Tablada in December 1945. Since then, with the invaluable contribution of Holocaust survivors, a collective memory has taken shape, which was joined by local organizations and, in recent decades, the Argentine State.

Argentina did not take part in the Second World War until near the end of the conflict. At the beginning of this millennium, nothing suggested that our country would join this Alliance. However, since Argentina regained democracy in 1983, successive governments of different political orientations have all agreed, for more than twenty years, on the need to become part of the IHRA and to develop policies on Holocaust education and remembrance. There is no doubt that this genuine state policy undertaken by Argentina has been the stepping stone for 

President Milei to make his valuable decision to assume this Presidency.

A clear example of this sustained effort is the adoption—by the Argentine State, the judiciary, civil society organizations, and other public institutions—of the IHRA working definition of antisemitism. This is a crucial tool in the fight against antisemitism, and one whose successful implementation our country can rightly showcase with pride, both in court cases and political actions.

Today, this joint effort of remembrance—by survivors, Jewish community organizations, and the State—has reached a milestone that will shape the decades to come. This Presidency aims to open new conversations and avenues to ensure that awareness of Holocaust remembrance becomes as global as possible. We seek to shed light both on our region and on other nations of the Global South in this difficult path initiated only a few decades ago by the late Yehuda Bauer and many other leaders.

Argentina is not only a fertile land for food production. It has also been—and remains—a fertile land for examples of coexistence among groups of diverse cultural, religious, and migratory backgrounds. We are not without conflict or tragic periods in our own history. In fact, only yesterday, we renewed our call for justice for the attack on the Israeli Embassy, and in the coming days we will commemorate the 50th anniversary of the beginning of the last military dictatorship, whose antisemitic nature is undeniable and which has brought so much death to the Argentine society during that dark period.

We trust that this very fertility will also help inspire new conversations and enrich those already underway.

We are aware that it will require a significant effort for delegations to travel here, and we will therefore devote all our energy to ensuring you have the best possible experience.

We look forward to welcoming you here soon—in what a famous tango son calls “My beloved Buenos Aires” (Mi Buenos Aires Querido).

Thank you very much.

For Argentina, it is a profound honor and a great responsibility to assume the Presidency of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance. We do so fully aware of the significance of this particular moment and of the duty it entails. We also do so as the first country in the region to hold this position, at a time when our Nation has decided to clearly state on what side of history it stands.

As President Milei has made clear, our country stands on the side of memory, of freedom, and of the defense of the ethical and moral values of the West, rooted in the Judeo-Christian tradition that has shaped our civilization.

In this context, the mission of the IHRA takes on particular relevance today. The Holocaust was one of the most harrowing atrocities in human history. It does not belong solely in the past. It has left a lasting mark on the moral conscience of humanity and has imposed upon us an obligation that allows for neither fatigue nor indifference. Remembering its victims and preserving historical truth constitute an imperative of our time.

This is all the more so as hatred, intolerance, and the glorification of death are once again emerging under new names, new slogans, and new guises—though driven by the same destructive impulse as always.

For this reason, for Argentina this Presidency is neither a matter of protocol nor a symbolic distinction. It represents a substantive responsibility. President Javier Milei has decided to give this initiative the highest level of political support and, in that context, has appointed Mr. Marcelo Mindlin to serve as Chair of the IHRA during this term. In order to fulfill this mission, Argentina’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs will play a role of institutional leadership and organization, contributing to and supporting his work, in coordination with the Ministry of Justice and the Ministry of Human Capital, and with the essential contribution of the institutions that uphold this cause with seriousness, commitment, and perseverance.

The Argentine Presidency has chosen a motto that accurately captures the spirit of this mandate: “Expanding the Frontiers of Remembrance.” This reflects a clear commitment. We seek to broaden the geographic, political, and moral reach of this agenda. We aim to make it stronger in our region. We seek to strengthen education, research, and public awareness wherever the passage of time, distance, or trivialization threaten to erode memory. And we intend to do so in an international context in which antisemitism has re-emerged with alarming intensity.

Today’s world offers warning signs that must not be relativized. The spirit of the time, hate speech, and current forms of violence, they all evoke periods humanity once vowed never to repeat. Every attack against Israel, every justification of terrorism, every gesture of indifference in the face of antisemitism confirms that this struggle remains fully alive. The enemy may change its symbols, its rhetoric, or its methods. But its impulse toward intolerance, its contempt for life, and its hostility toward Western civilization remain unchanged. In the face of this, capitulation is not an option.

Argentina too is familiar with the face of terrorism on its own soil. It is present in the pain of the attacks perpetrated in the 1990s, the wounds of which remain open in the national memory. It is present in the lives cut short, in the wounds left in families, and in the demand for justice that continues to resonate throughout our society. And it is also present in the certainty that the act of terrorism that struck Israel on October 7 responds to the same criminal logic that targeted our country more than three decades ago. For Argentina, Iranian terrorism is not some distant issue. It is a matter of national interest that has directly affected our people and requires a firm, clear, and sustained position.

Our voice in this cause also results from our own history. Argentina received thousands of people fleeing horror. Many survivors found here a place to rebuild their lives in freedom and dignity. Over time, their lives helped shape in our country the largest Jewish community in Latin America and one of the most significant in the world outside Israel. This reality not only honors us—it also compels us. It compels us to safeguard memory, to protect community life, to guarantee religious freedom, and to combat, without ambiguity, all forms of discrimination and hatred.

Based on that conviction, the Argentine Presidency will advance a concrete, serious, and ambitious work program. It will have three central priorities. The first will be to strengthen Holocaust education, research, and remembrance, with particular emphasis on younger generations, teacher training, and the responsible dissemination of knowledge. The second will be to promote greater study, recognition, and visibility of the genocide of the Roma people—a tragedy that also demands remembrance, justice, and awareness. The third will be to intensify the fight against antisemitism in all its forms, from the most brutal to the most subtle, from overt violence to distortion, trivialization, and denial.

To these priorities we will add a specific effort to project this agenda toward Latin America. Building on the leadership of President Milei, we seek to bring the work of the IHRA closer to our region, to convene new academic and institutional voices, to promote the preservation of and access to archives, and to foster a deeper regional conversation on the Holocaust, its lessons, and its historical impact. Argentina aims to lead this effort with humility and determination. Just as our region is undergoing a period of political change, it can and must also assume a more visible role in defending the essential values that uphold free societies.

In this task, those of us who hold public offices cannot repeat the mistakes of the past. Remaining silent or looking the other way has never been neutral—much less so now. Speaking out against antisemitism, unequivocally condemning terrorism, and defending historical truth are concrete duties of leadership. Commemoration alone is not enough; we must act. Remembrance alone is not enough; we must assume the moral consequences of what we remember.

Therefore, Argentina today reaffirms its commitment to freedom and to human rights. It also reaffirms that this conviction requires us to work every day toward a society free from discrimination, hatred, and persecution. Peace, tolerance, respect for human dignity, and the defense of truth are not abstract notions. They are principles for action. They are the concrete way to confront that ideology of fanaticism and destruction which, in its various forms, repeatedly becomes the greatest hurdle to a free world.

We assume this Presidency with gratitude, with seriousness, and with full awareness of the challenge. We assume it to honor the victims. We assume it to stand alongside the survivors. We assume it to rise to the demands of a cause that transcends governments and generations. And we assume it with the determination to make this term a meaningful contribution to strengthening remembrance and to defending civilization against hatred.

I would like to conclude with a reference to the Torah that expresses, with sobriety and depth, the moral horizon that must guide us. In the Book of Numbers, chapter 6, verses 24–26, in the Priestly Blessing of Parashat Naso, it is written:

“The Lord bless you and keep you; the Lord make His face shine upon you, and be gracious to you; the Lord lift up His countenance upon you, and give you peace.”

May that light of memory preserve us from the darkness of forgetting. May that grace grant us the strength to uphold the truth. And may that peace, which is the most precious good, find us steadfast in the defense of life, of freedom, and of human dignity.

In 1940, in the Warsaw Ghetto, historian Emanuel Ringelblum and a group of fellow inmates, including artists, historians, and teachers, did something remarkable.

They began collecting the stories of the people around them.

Diaries. Letters. Drawings.

Testimonies.

They sealed these documents in metal boxes and milk cans and buried them deep beneath the rubble of the ghetto.

They knew they might not survive.

But they hoped their stories would.

One member of the group, a 19-year-old student named David Graber, added a final note before the boxes were sealed.

“What we were unable to cry and shriek out to the world we buried in the ground.’’

Those stories did not remain buried forever.

Of the sixty members of the group, only three survived.

And only one of them — Hersh Wasser — knew where the secret archives might be.

He traveled back to uncover them.

Then survivors traveled to share them.

And over time, those voices travelled far beyond the places where the horrors of the Holocaust unfolded.

Across Europe.

Across the Atlantic.

To countries like Israel — where institutions such as Yad Vashem became central places of remembrance and testimony.

And to countries like Argentina — Where more than five thousand survivors rebuilt their lives and carried the memory of destroyed communities into a new world.

This is how Holocaust remembrance has always moved forward.

Stories travel.

And we must never stop seeking them out.

Over the past year, under the leadership of Dani Dayan, the Israeli Presidency has reminded us of the importance of listening to those voices.

In Jerusalem, we saw how diaries, photographs, poems and testimonies preserve those voices — and why safeguarding them remains our responsibility.

The theme of the Israeli Presidency, Crossroads of Generations, captured this responsibility well.

As the generation of survivors grows smaller, the responsibility to carry their voices forward grows greater.

The IHRA exists to meet that responsibility.

And today we mark an important transition in that work.

Argentina assumes the Presidency of the IHRA.

Its connection to Holocaust history is both deep and complex.

Many stories travelled here. Some were stories of refuge, while others revealed difficult truths.

Confronting that history honestly is part of the responsibility we share today.

It is also why the preservation of evidence — in archives, testimonies and historical records — remains so essential to the work of remembrance.

So it is fitting that a central priority of Argentina’s Presidency will be to expand access to Holocaust archives and strengthen the connection between the IHRA and Latin America.

With Marcelo Mindlin and Fabiana Loguzzo as Chairs, Argentina will guide the IHRA towards Expanding the Frontiers of Remembrance.

It is a fitting theme.

Because the stories that Ringelblum and his fellow prisoners buried in the ground were never meant to remain in one place.

They were meant to be heard.

In classrooms and museums.

In archives and memorial sites.

Across borders and across generations.

And as the work of remembrance continues to travel, so must we.

As you, Marcelo, noted in our last plenary, the IHRA now crosses the equator for the first time in its history.

This is more than a geographic milestone.

It is a reminder that the responsibility to remember the Holocaust and the Genocide of the Roma belongs to the whole world.

On behalf of the IHRA Permanent Office, I thank the Israeli Presidency for its leadership and dedication over the past year.

And I warmly welcome the Argentine Presidency as it leads the Alliance into this next chapter.

Doy una cálida bienvenida a la Presidencia Argentina mientras lidera la Alianza hacia este próximo capítulo.

Together, we continue the work entrusted to us — ensuring that the voices buried in the ground are heard across borders, across generations, and now, across the equator.

It is a great honor to speak to you today as Israel concludes its Presidency of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance and hands the Presidency to Argentina for the coming year.

This handover takes place during a turbulent moment for my country and for the wider Middle East, with global ramifications. The events of recent weeks made my journey here unexpectedly complicated — but also, in a sense, even more meaningful.

And I can't help but think these days what would have happened if, in 1937, 1938, and 1939, the world's leaders had made the same decisions they're making now. Perhaps, in that case, the IHRA wouldn't have been needed, Yad Vashem wouldn't have been needed. Israel today is engaged, together with the United States, in a war against a brutal dictatorial regime that has not only threatened to annihilate us but has repeatedly promoted explicit Holocaust denial. At such a moment, the mission of IHRA, safeguarding truthful Holocaust remembrance, is not only historical. It is profoundly contemporary.

Today’s gathering is also deeply personal for me. Argentina is the country of my birth and youth. It was here that I first learned about the Shoah, first encountered Holocaust survivors, and first witnessed acts of remembrance.

And I want to add something outside of the prepared text. My father was born in Europe in 1920 and arrived in Argentina at the age of seven, in 1927. And he always told me—and I apologize to the European delegates, ambassadors, and representatives for what I'm about to say—my father told me: "We escaped from Europe; they oppressed us, they discriminated against us. They were killing us."

We left Europe, as he told me, with a curse on our lips. We emigrated from Argentina to Israel because, as Zionists, we wanted to live in the Jewish state and contribute to its development. But everything we are, my father, may he rest in peace, told me, we owe to this country. We left Argentina, he told me, with a blessing on our lips.

Decades later, it carries special meaning for me to participate in this handover of leadership from my beloved, Israel, to my beloved, Argentina.

I am confident that under Argentina’s leadership IHRA will continue to expand its reach and deepen its impact. We especially look forward to hearing more voices from Spanish-speaking countries and communities as they join us in advancing IHRA’s mission.

Allow me briefly to reflect on Israel’s Presidency.

Our work this year was guided by the theme “Crossroads of Generations.” This theme reflects one of the defining realities of Holocaust remembrance today: the inevitable passing of the survivor generation, and the responsibility of our generation, and those to come, to carry forward the torch of memory.

For that reason, we placed particular emphasis on scholarship and education. The future of Holocaust remembrance depends on ensuring that younger generations of researchers and educators continue to deepen our understanding of the Shoa, the understanding of the incomprehensible.

That's why we held a research workshop at Yad Vashem in memory of Professor Yehuda Bauer, bringing together emerging scholars from several countries. In addition, Yad Vashem and the USC Shoah Foundation will launch an Early Career Holocaust Research Seminar under the IHRA umbrella, designed to nurture the next generation of Holocaust researchers.

Education was another central pillar of our Presidency. The updated Recommendations for Teaching and Learning about the Holocaust were adopted at the Jerusalem Plenary, and shortly thereafter we held an inaugural implementation program with teachers in Cyprus.

We also sought to reinforce IHRA’s role in confronting antisemitism where it intersects with Holocaust remembrance. The IHRA Statement adopted during our June Plenary, which had to be online, called on governments to protect Holocaust remembrance institutions and practitioners from antisemitic and distortionist threats.

Furthermore, we advanced remembrance of the genocide of the Roma and Sinti through a conference in Prague devoted to practical tools for education and commemoration.

Like any Presidency, ours also faced challenges. Regional instability required us to hold the June Plenary online at short notice. I want to thank all of you. To the Chiefs of Delegation that are with us via Zoom, for your flexibility and cooperation during that time.

Fortunately, we were able to gather in person in December in Jerusalem, at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and at Yad Vashem. That Plenary demonstrated once again the vitality of IHRA's unique international community.

I would like to express our Presidency’s sincere gratitude to the Heads of Delegation, Deputies, experts, and colleagues who worked with us throughout this year and, as I said, they are now also with us virtually.

I also wish to offer my personal thanks to two individuals whose wisdom and dedication help sustain this organization, each in her and his own way: our Secretary General Michaela Küchler and our Advisor Dr. Robert Williams. Your experience and guidance are invaluable to IHRA.

My dear friends,

As Chairman of Yad Vashem, I will remain closely connected to IHRA and continue to support its mission.

Serving this year both as IHRA Chair and as Chairman of Yad Vashem has been for me both natural and deeply meaningful.

I now lay down my IHRA hat enriched by this experience.

At a time when historical truth is increasingly threatened, the work of IHRA is more necessary than ever.

I conclude by reiterating Israel’s full confidence in Argentina’s Presidency of IHRA.

To our friends Marcelo Mindlin and Ambassador Fabiana Loguzzo: we congratulate you warmly and wish you every success in the year ahead.

The entire IHRA community stands behind you.

Toda Raba, muchas gracias y mucho éxito.