Dec 30, 2021: The German foreign minister has withdrawn his proposal to award the country’s Order of Merit to Israeli historian Gadon Greif, after a report widely criticized the academic for denying the genocide in Srebrenica.

Germany had announced earlier this year that it planned to award Greif for his contributions to Holocaust research, which focuses on the Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination camp.

However, a wave of criticism followed, as Greif served as head of a commission that published a controversial report in July, which concluded that in July 1995, Srebrenica, Bosnia and Herzegovina there was no genocide, contrary to the rulings of the international courts.

Bosnia’s Serb-run entity of Republika Srpska had commissioned Greif to conduct the report. Serb leaders openly deny the genocide, including Milorad Dodik, the Serb member of the country’s tripartite presidency who is now seeking secession for the entity.

The award ceremony was scheduled for November 10, but Germany postponed the ceremony until further notice, saying it was reconsidering its decision.

On Wednesday, German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier said in a letter to Esnaf Begic, president of the board of directors at the Islamic College in Osnabruck, Germany that the foreign ministry had withdrawn its decision to present the award to Greif.

The now-closed International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) and International Court of Justice (ICJ) long concluded that the systematic massacre of some 8,000 Bosniak men and boys by Serb forces in July 1995 constituted a genocide – the worst atrocity in Europe since World War II.

The Institute for Research of Genocide Canada (IGC) called Germany’s decision “another big victory for truth and justice”.

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