Special to Art and Living Magazine
MADRID (Hollywood Today/AFP) 9/13/07 — Jerusalem’s Holocaust Museum has won the 2007 Prince of Asturias Award for Concord, Spain’s equivalent of the Nobels, the Prince of Asturias Foundation said Wednesday.
The jury honored the museum for its work in “transmitting to future generations the need for preserving human rights and, essentially, the respect for life” after the horrors of Nazism.
In a statement the Foundation said the museum “has become the most important repository of information and research and education centre of one the largest genocides in the history of Mankind,” with an estimated six million Jews killed during the Holocaust.
The museum will receive 50,000 euros ($65,000) at a ceremony next month in the Asturian regional capital of Oviedo.
Wednesday’s accolade gives Israel a double triumph as Israeli writer Amos Oz took the literature award in June.
The museum had been put forward for the Concord award, one of eight made annually in different fields including culture, technology and sport, by German Chancellor Angela Merkel.
The Jerusalem Holocaust Museum, or Yad Vashem, is an exhibition complex located in Har Hazikaron, in western Jerusalem.
The museum receives around two million visitors per year.
The Israeli parliament passed a law establishing it in 1953 in order to keep alive the memory of victims of the Shoah (Holocaust), killed between 1933 and 1945 by the Nazis and their collaborators.
This year’s other awards included the accolade for international cooperation for Al Gore for his efforts to combat climate change and raise environmental awareness.
The Arts award went to American singer Bob Dylan, the award for technical and scientific research was jointly given to British scientist Peter Lawrence and Spanish scientist Gines Morata, and the communication and humanities went to scientific journals Science and Nature.
In addition, German sociologist Ralf Dahrendorf claimed the social sciences version and retired German Formula 1 driver Michael Schumacher claimed the sporting equivalent.
The Prince of Foundation earmarks the award for the person or institution who has made an outstanding contribution to mutual understanding and peaceful coexistence amongst peoples while fighting injustice, poverty, disease or ignorance and defending freedom, widening knowledge or preserving mankind’s heritage.”
Along with the cash prize, winners also take home the replica of a sculpture specially commissioned from Joan Miro.