Letter to Spanish Prime Minister: “Take measures, on this International Holocaust Commemoration Day, against those who would desecrate memory and banalize Nazi atrocities.”

Paris, 28 January 2020

In a letter to Spanish Prime Minister, Pedro Sanchez, the Simon Wiesenthal Centre Director for International Relations, Dr. Shimon Samuels, expressed shock “to learn about a brief prepared by the State Prosecutor (Circular 7/2019 on the Signs to Recognize Hate Crime...). This claims that ‘incitement to hatred against Nazis’ can be considered as ‘a hate crime’.”

See: https://www.lavanguardia.com/politica/20190522/462408935254/delito-de-odio-nazi-fiscalia.html

The Prosecution argued: “The origin of the hate crime is related to the protection of vulnerable communities”... “An aggression against a person of Nazi ideology or incitement to hatred towards such a group can be included in this type of crime.”

Comments included on the web:

- “Would it be a crime to incite to hatred of... ISIS or ETA... or those whose ideology supports the murder of ‘inferior races’?”

Samuels questioned: “Should we expect the imprisonment of Auschwitz survivors for having incited hatred of the Nazis?”

The Centre urged the Prime Minister “to take appropriate measures, on this International Holocaust Commemoration Day, against those who would desecrate memory and banalize Nazi atrocities.”

“A sick joke, a slap at all Holocaust survivors, just like the claim that the Nazis could never forgive the Jews for forcing them to build Auschwitz,” concluded Samuels.