This year’s Leon Zelman Prize for Dialogue and Understanding is awarded to the right-wing extremism expert Andreas Peham. With this distinction, the jury honors his “extensive activity from research to education to mediation work,” which Peham has been conducting for almost three decades at the Documentation Centre of Austrian Resistance (DÖW). The award will be presented in the fall at Vienna City Hall.
“With his extensive activity,” stated the jury, “from research to education to mediation work in the spirit of dialogue and understanding, Andreas Peham fulfills the criteria of the prize in multiple ways. Significant areas of his activity include mentoring and the analysis of right-wing extremism/Neo-Nazism, Islamism, and anti-Semitism. Peham has also presented internationally acclaimed works in these areas. In the field of anti-Semitism, he has worked together with numerous institutions in Austria and abroad, in particular in Germany and Israel.
He is a sought-after speaker and leader of numerous workshops on extremism prevention; it is especially worth mentioning his pedagogic skills when it comes to working and fostering dialogue with young people in high schools, but particularly in vocational schools and youth centers.
A significant contribution to intercultural educational work
Here, too, Andreas Peham makes a significant contribution to intercultural educational work as well as Holocaust education. For many years, he accompanied artist, writer and Auschwitz survivor Ceija Stojka on her visits to schools to draw attention to the persecution and fate of the Roma people during the Nazi era.”
The jury consists of Martina Maschke and Peter Schwarz, experts in commemorative and remembrance culture, historians Sophie Lillie and Michaela Raggam-Blesch as the successors to Heidemarie Uhl, who passed away in 2023, and Armin Thurnher, publicist and editor of the city newspaper “Falter”.
The Leon Zelman Prize, founded by the City of Vienna and endowed with 5,000 euros, has been awarded since 2013 to people or initiatives that are actively committed to the memory of the Shoah in the spirit of Leon Zelman (1928-2007). But the prize also honors special civil society efforts, action against anti-Semitism, racism, and xenophobia, as well as educational and youth work including projects that promote intercultural dialogue.
Source: APA (OTS)
