News Releases 2023
Paris, May-June 2023
An article entitled ‘‘Les entreprises, ‘des êtres sans mémoire’’’ (Businesses, “entities without memory”) was published in the journal L’Arche n° 698 of May-June 2023.
Written by Richard Odier, the article reminds us of the German, but also Austrian, Japanese or French businesses that collaborated with the Nazi regime. Eighty years later, many have emerged from World War II and the Holocaust apparently unscathed, but still have the greatest difficulty in coming to terms with their dark past.
Many companies still need to carry out a real work of Memory, to learn the lessons from their complicity and apply Simon Wiesenthal’s admonition “Never Again!”. To remind businesses of their past responsibilities and sensitize them on contemporary forms of antisemitism has been among the Wiesenthal Centre’s tasks over the past decades. This was, for example, the case with companies providing chemical agents to Iraq under Saddam Hussein’s dictatorship, that were used to massacre and maim the Kurdish minority.
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For further information, contact csweurope@gmail.com
Paris, 26 May 2023
In 2010, the Wiesenthal Centre had issued a “Travel Advisory” on Malmö, Sweden, for the constant attacks on Jews and Judaism in that city.
Despite visits by the Centre’s officials – Rabbi Abraham Cooper, Director for Global Social Action and Associate Dean of the Centre, together with Dr Shimon Samuels, the Centre’s Director for International Relations –, hatred persisted, as in the Malmö Arab Book Fair of 2020, that was terminated thanks to the Centre’s alerting local authorities. See: https://www.wiesenthal.com/about/news/update.html
MEMRI has exposed the purpose of a conference to be held tomorrow, Saturday 27 May, entitled “75 Years On... We Will Return!”, to be attended by some “20,000 Palestinians from around Europe, but also European Parliament members and other politicians.”
Read more: Wiesenthal Centre Condemns Malmö Hosting HAMAS...
Paris, 19 May 2023
Madam Prime Minister,
You will recall our conversation, regarding the rise in extremism – both left and right of the political spectrum – and your concern particularly regarding the scourge of antisemitism in France.
Photo France Bleu
Paris, 16 May 2023
Egypt has just been correctly thanked for its role in persuading a bunch of terrorists with missiles attacking Israel, to cease their fire until the next time.
The Wiesenthal Centre annually, however, in its measures of Jew-hatred at six Arab Book Fairs, always finds the leading antisemitic publishers to be Egyptian. The most sold are based on Henry Ford’s “The International Jew”, the Tsarist Russian forgery of the “Protocols of the Elders of Zion” and Hitler’s “Mein Kampf”.
“Once again, at the 2023 Cairo International Book Fair (CIBF), was a plethora of Egyptian publishers of hate (Dar Al Kitab, Dar Al Khaloud, Dar Al Hayat, First Book Publishing, Dar Al Nadaa, UM Publishing, Dar Pharos...),” stated the Centre’s Director for International Relations, Dr Shimon Samuels.
Read more: Egyptian Accolades for Ceasefire, Yet Silence on...
4 May 2023
In a letter to CEO of Christie’s, Guillaume Cerutti, Wiesenthal Centre Director for International Relations, Dr Shimon Samuels, demanded the withdrawal of the 3-15 May Geneva auction “World of Heidi Horten: Magnificent Jewels.”
The Horten’s billions used to build this collection were also the sum of profits from Nazi “aryanization” of Jewish department stores.
Helmut Horten worked in a department store when Hitler came to power in 1933. He profited from “aryanization laws” to buy out at a cut price that store from its Jewish owners Strauss and Lauter, who fled to the US... then continued acquiring Jewish-owned shops and department stores. In 1937, by entering the Nazi party and the initials of his name (HH), enhanced his relationship with the regime.
Read more: Wiesenthal Centre to Christie’s: “Stop Your Sale...