The Leo Baeck Program

The Leo Baeck program is organized and funded by the Remembrance, Responsibility, and Future Foundation. It is a joint initiative of the foundation and the commission established at the Leo Baeck Institute to teach the history of Jewish life in Germany. The program bears the name of Dr. Leo Baeck, a liberal rabbi and one of the most important representatives of German Judaism in the twentieth century.

The Leo Baeck program provides funding to school-affiliated and non-school-affiliated educational providers that set themselves the goal of teaching Jewish history. The educational projects they support take an integrative approach: the history of Jews in Germany is seen as part of German history, and Jewish history and Jewish life in Germany are addressed without focusing exclusively on the Nazi period. Jewish life in Germany before and after the Shoah is also examined.

The projects range from continuing teacher education to school-based and extracurricular activities. These include workshops on local Jewish history and educational programs that create and use web-based and printed materials. Around thirty projects are funded each year with grants of up to 6,000 €. Nearly 150 projects have received support in Germany since the program’s inception in 2005.

The Remembrance, Responsibility, and Future Foundation

The Remembrance, Responsibility, and Future Foundation was established in 2000 to make humanitarian payments to former Nazi slave laborers – a mandate it fulfilled through late 2006. In commemoration of the victims of Nazi injustice, the foundation has continued to support Holocaust survivors and to promote human rights and international understanding. It has been endowed with 358 million € of capital for its funding activities. From the income generated by this capital, it contributes around 7.5 million € each year to international projects in three categories: "A Critical Examination of History," "Working for Human Rights," and "Commitment to the Victims of National Socialism."