News Releases 2022
His plaque in the Chiavari Memorial Park “Giacomo Cohen Da Silva / 18-04-1875 / Auschwitz, 11-12-1943” has been desecrated.
Paris, 1 February 2022
Wiesenthal Centre Director for International Relations, Dr Shimon Samuels, recalled, “as a child, leaving British weather, we would drive every summer for vacation in Italy. Between Rapallo and Chiavari, Liguria, was a meeting ground for Jewish families from across Western Europe. Marriages were celebrated and gossip flowed. The Holocaust was thought to be behind us, as the grandchildren were to enjoy the new Europe.”
Read more: Wiesenthal Centre Weeps Holocaust Victim Killed...
Blog by Dr Shimon Samuels published in The Times of Israel
28 January 2022
https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/happy-as-a-jew-in-france-what-happened-to-smash-the-dream/
The Wiesenthal Centre chose to open its office in Paris as France had – and still has – the largest Jewish and Muslim communities in Europe. Though religion is not included in state census, it is estimated that there are about 500,000 Jews and over 4 million Muslims.
Despite the 1894 Dreyfus case – the Jewish French army Captain unjustly charged for espionage – that revealed a large retinue of antisemitism in a split country, despite the Vichy collaborationist role in harassing the Jews and deporting over 72,000 to the death camps, the mantra “Happy as a Jew in France!” still persisted.
Read more: ‘Happy as a Jew in France!’ – What happened to...
21 January 2022
This 20 January, the Simon Wiesenthal Centre, the Henry Jackson Society and the House of the Wannsee Conference convened a Zoom webinar on the subject: “80 Years Since Wannsee: An Alarm for Other Genocides?”
Paris, 17 January 2022
Wiesenthal Centre Director for International Relations, Dr Shimon Samuels, noted that “this is the 8th year of our monitoring antisemitic publications at seven Arab Book Fairs. Most, this year, were clean in the spirit of the Abraham Accords.”
Qatar is hardly one of those countries. Its array of antisemitic books has even been displayed on its Governmental stand at the Frankfurt Buchmesse. This year, it contained the most notorious classic of Jew-hatred, Adolf Hitler’s “Mein Kampf” on the Jordanian Al Ahlia publisher stand.
Read more: Wiesenthal Centre Denounces “Adolf Hitler - Mein...
Paris, 16 January 2022
The Director for International Relations of the Simon Wiesenthal Centre, Dr Shimon Samuels, expressed outrage that, “yesterday, at a conference in Ferrara, Italy, organized by Jewish author Moni Ovadia, entitled ‘The Festival of Memories,’ MP Vittorio Sgarbi, known for his political rants, made an antisemitic outburst.”
Sgarbi is a main supporter for Silvio Berlusconi’s candidacy to become next President of the Italian Republic. Sgarbi came out with a disgraceful declaration just seconds into his speech: “One extermination that he [Ovadia], out of modesty, does not deal with, is that of the Palestinians... perpetrated by the State of Israel over the years...”