Paris, 13 April 2011
In a letter to Federal Chancellory Minister of State for Culture and Media, Bernd Neuman, the Simon Wiesenthal Centre's Director for International Relations, Dr. Shimon Samuels, deplored "a most disturbing video clip":
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=DtzMDxjUt_0].
Samuels noted that "this 6 minutes 38 seconds lesson on Islam - in German with English subtitles - was filmed in a German school class and now appears on several blogs. "
The letter highlighted that "though the school is not identified in order to protect the source, what is most chilling is the apparently banal delivery, by the teacher, of dispassionate hate. The constant, but low-key, calumnies of their Jewish and Christian neighbours' treachery is passively absorbed by the class of young German Muslims."
Samuels added that "the teacher uses none of the propaganda devices of Hamas, Hezbollah or Al Qaeda ideologues. He is an "ordinary" educator in a school for "ordinary" young Germans - the message so redolent of such classes in the 1930's. "
The Centre urged the Minister to :
- mobilize all appropriate authorities across the Federal Republic
- promptly investigate this poisonous attrition of young minds
- prosecute the "ordinary" perpetrators of this criminal incitement
- more vigorously monitor minority educational structures nationally
- ensure that only accredited and registered teachers of religion be
authorized on school premises.
"The consequences of this seditious pedagogy threaten Jews and Christians directly, but menace even more the delicate social compact of Germany and the European Union" concluded Samuels.
N.B The Wiesenthal Centre in no way endorses the blogs/ websites cited at the end of the clip or any potential offence caused by the closing images.