Since the year 2000 the appointment of the International Auschwitz Council has been the responsibility of the Polish prime minister. The council’s 25 members are appointed by the prime minister as experts on the process of coming to terms with the history of Auschwitz and the Holocaust. The council members serve for a term of six years.

For very many years the work of the council was strongly shaped by its chairperson, Professor Wladyslaw Bartoszewski who, together with other survivors of the camp, was able to represent the standpoint of the former Jewish and non-Jewish prisoners and support the international experts in their efforts to solve many current conflicts. In 2014 Professor Bartoszewski handed over the chair of the council to Professor Barbara Engelking. At the end of the council’s third term of office in 2018, the Polish government refrained from newly appointing the internationally highly regarded advisory body which, among others, included Ronald Lauder, President of the World Jewish Congress, Avner Shalev as Director of Yad Vashem, Sara Bloomfield from the Washington Holocaust Memorial and the Auschwitz survivor Roman Kent as President of the International Auschwitz Committee. The members of the council were discharged without any information about the future of the body’s continuing existence. Members of the International Auschwitz Council from Germany were Romani Rose, President of the Central Council of German Sinti and Roma, and Christoph Heubner, Executive Vice President of the International Auschwitz Committee.

In recent months there have been numerous, strongly escalating conflicts between Israel and Poland concerning remembrance culture. And the International Auschwitz Committee has called for the re-establishment of the International Auschwitz Council in the interest of the Auschwitz Memorial, Polish-Jewish relations, and the international impulses that this body has generated in the past concerning memorials in many countries. As in the past, the work of this council is urgently needed in order to mediate early on in existing conflicts and thus defuse the situation. The President of the International Auschwitz Committee, Roman Kent, and Marian Turski made this clear again in May 2021 in a letter to the Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki and requested him to reinstate the council.

In Warsaw, Marian Turski, Auschwitz survivor and President of the International Auschwitz Committee, commented on the new appointment of the 4th International Auschwitz Council by the Polish government and the meeting with Prime Minister Morawiecki as follows:

"Together with the other survivors I am very grateful for the re-establishment of the International Auschwitz Council and yesterday’s meeting with Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki who presented us with the Polish government’s certificates of appointment. This is an important new beginning in complex times. The existence of this body will be an important part of the future work of the Auschwitz Memorial. It will expand the internationality and accompany especially the connections between the Jewish and Polish worlds, and act as a moderator and advisor in conflict situations."

And Christoph Heubner, Executive Vice President of the International Auschwitz Committee, added: "Particularly in the current situation where numerous memorials in Europe have been the targets of right-wing extremist attacks and vandalism, it is important that the Polish government creates a forum for international dialogue that can benefit not only the Auschwitz Memorial, but above all the dialogue and remembrance work with young people. I am grateful to be able to represent Germany in this important body alongside Romani Rose from the Central Council of German Sinti and Roma."

Members of the International Auschwitz Council appointed on behalf of the International Auschwitz Committee include the Auschwitz survivor Marian Turski and Hannah Lessing from Austria. The body also includes representatives from Israel, the USA, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Austria, Ukraine, the Netherlands, Germany and Poland. The council is headed by the newly elected Polish historian Professor Grzegorz Behrendt and Dani Dayan, Chairman of the Yad Vashem Directorate in Jerusalem.