2011 | 14. Award Ceremony
May 20th 2011
Gläserner Sall of the Viennese Musikverein / Magna Auditorium, Vienna
The 14th award ceremony took place in the Gläserne Saal of the Viennese Musikverein after a concert of the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra under the artistic direction of Maestro Daniel Barenboim. The organisations ASPIS, ESRA and Hemayat, and the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra and Maestro Daniel Barenboim were being honoured with the Bruno Kreisky Prize for Human Rights. The laudatory speeches were held by the artist and writer André Heller and Barbara Prammer, President of the National Council of the Austrian Parliament.
ASPIS is an independent institution at the University of Klagenfurt offering professional help for traumatized people, especially victims of torture and survivors of the Nazi terror. The association works together with a variety of institutions to be able to combine psychotherapeutic work with scientific research in terms of Human Rights. With ESRA an innovative and professional organization has been awarded, which was founded to offer comprehensive assistance to the survivors of Nazi persecution and their descendants, as well as to support Jewish families, who have immigrated in recent decades to Austria, in their integration process. The association Hemayat has established itself in Vienna as a center for medical, psychological and psychotherapeutic care for victims of torture and warsurvivors.
With Daniel Barenboim a prominent pianist and director was honoured, who is fully committed to reconciliation in the Middle East conflict. The West-Eastern Divan Orchestra, which was founded in 1999 in Weimar by Daniel Barenboim together with the Palestinian born literary theorist Edward Said, is composed of young Israeli and Arab musicians and has now its base in Seville, Spain. In 2007 the orchestra was awarded the Praemium Imperiale Grant for Young Artists.