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News Releases 2011

"Malmo: A case-study of chronic antisemitism in public discourse, in micro, carries lessons for the OSCE region."

Prague, 24 March 2011

Dr. Shimon Samuels, the Simon Wiesenthal Centre’s Director for International Relations and its Permanent Delegate to the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) appealed to the 56 state body today to urge Swedish measures against rampant antisemitism in the southern city of Malmo.

Samuels was attending the OSCE’s Office for Democratic Institution and Human Rights (ODIHR) High Level Meeting on “Confronting Antisemitism in Public Discourse”, in Prague, Czech Republic. His statement follows:

Stockholm, 16 March 2011

In a letter summarizing its Malmo meeting with Mayor Ilmar Reepalu, the Wiesenthal Centre expressed disappointment at "his obfuscation of responsibility in regard to his Jewish citizens, passing the fault for any public apprehension - including those we heard among Muslim and Roma leaders in his city - onto "Stockholm", "the police", etc."

The Centre's Director for International Relations, Dr. Shimon Samuels, noted that : 
"- your charge that the exclusion of spectators from the Sweden-Israel Davis Cup heat in an empty stadium was instigated by the police, has been emphatically denied by Malmo law enforcement. 

" The Macedonian people - like the Jewish people almost fifty years earlier - has reentered geography and history, and its own sovereign identity deserves to be acknowledged accordingly...The lessons of the Holocaust in your country must serve as en early warning system to those of your neighbors where antisemitism and Holocaust denial are resurgent."

Skopje, 9 March 2011

Simon Wiesenthal Centre Director for International Relations, Dr.Shimon Samuels, addressed the ceremony organized by the Government, Holocaust Foundation and Jewish community of Macedonia, to mark the 68th anniversary of the deportation to Treblinka of over 7,000 - of which one third were children - where all perished. The ceremony launched an impressive Holocaust Centre and Museum,built in Skopje, with Government restitution of assets looted by Bulgarian Axis occupants from the murdered Jews.

Samuels presentation follows: 

Paris, 3 March 2011

In a letter to Frankfurt Book Fair Director, Juergen Boos, the Simon Wiesenthal Centre's Director for International Relations, Dr. Shimon Samuels, exposed publishers promoting incitement at the SIEL 2011 (Salon International du Livre et de l'Edition) in Casablanca, Morocco.

The letter noted that the SIEL is billed as the most important book fair in the Middle East and North Africa, carrying major influence  on readers and public opinion", adding that "our Centre annually monitors the Frankfurt Book Fair stands for incitement to hatred and violence.  We now have an early opportunity to preempt several such hatemongers from polluting the 2011 Book Fair."

"Music Must Serve to Contain Hate, Not to Reward It!"

Paris, 14 February 2011

In a letter to the International Music Council (IMC) President, Prof,Frans de Ruiter, the Simon Wiesenthal Centre's Director for International Relations, Dr. Shimon Samuels, urged him "to vigourously condemn Greek composer, Mikis Theodorakis, for his obsessive anti-Jewish hatemongering and to strip him of his 2005 IMC-UNESCO International Music Prize".