Germany Pulls Plan To Honor Israeli Holocaust Historian Over Srebrenica Comments

The German government has scrapped plans to award the country’s highest honor to an Israeli Holocaust historian due criticism about his work on genocide in Bosnia-Herzegovina.

German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier had planned to present the Order of Merit to Gideon Greif, but the presidential office and Foreign Ministry said they would review the plans for the award in October.

German news agency dpa reported on December 31 that the Foreign Ministry withdrew the nomination earlier this month.

Greif, who is primarily a Holocaust researcher, chaired an international commission of historians who published a report in July that suggested the Srebrenica massacre at the end of the 1992-95 war in Bosnia was not genocide.

International courts have deemed the mass murder of more than 8,000 Muslim Bosniaks around Srebrenica by Bosnian Serb forces as genocide. Denial of the genocide became a criminal offense in Bosnia in July, in one of the last acts of the former high representative of the international community in Bosnia, Valentin Inzko.

The report was commissioned by Bosnian Serb leader Milorad Dodik, who has recently pushed for secession of the Serb part of Bosnia, Republika Srpska.

Dodik has repeatedly questioned the nature of events in Srebrenica and criticized laws criminalizing denial of the genocide.

News of the German decision was first reported by klix.ba, a Bosnian news site, citing a letter from the German Foreign Ministry dated December 7.

Based on reporting by dpa