The Internationale Liga für Menschenrechte (Berlin) (ILMR) has awarded the Carl von Ossietzky Medal since 1962. The league has honored personalities, initiatives or organizations who have worked with civil courage and outstanding commitment to the realization of human rights annually since 1962 and at least once every two years from 2011 with the Carl von Ossietzky Medal it donated. The award is named after the German pacifist and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Carl von Ossietzky, who died in 1938 as a result of imprisonment in a concentration camp.

Joseph Wulf was a German-Polish Jewish historian. A survivor of the Auschwitz concentration camp, he was the author of several books about Nazi Germany and the Holocaust, including Das Dritte Reich und die Juden ; Heinrich Himmler (1960); and Martin Bormann: Hitlers Schatten (1962). The House of the Wannsee Conference museum in Berlin houses the Joseph Wulf Library in his honour.