News Releases 2019
"UNESCO seems to have taken a position against the Making Memory UK National Holocaust Memorial and Learning Centre in Victoria Tower Gardens in Westminster, London, abutting the Houses of Parliament on the River Thames."
"The memorial is designed to honour the Jewish victims of the Holocaust and all other victims of Nazi persecution, including Roma, LGBT and the disabled. The planners argue that they will take up 27% of the green space currently in the park...Its propinquity to the British Parliament aims to focus on the need to sensitize the public and their MP’s to the dangers of bigotry, prejudice, hate and violence against the other."
Paris, 12 September 2019
In a letter to UNESCO Director-General Audrey Azoulay, Wiesenthal Centre Director for International Relations Dr.Shimon Samuels, noted that "UNESCO seems to have taken a position against the "Making Memory UK National Holocaust Memorial and Learning Centre in Victoria Tower Gardens in Westminster, London, abutting the Houses of Parliament on the River Thames", adding that "the concept was born in 2015, yet a planning application is still being considered by Westminster City Council".
“After delaying tactics, the issue is now to be buried in the National Senate,frozen due to the continued absence of a Belgian federal government”... “Time is running out for the survivors!”
Paris, 8 September 2019
In a letter to Belgian Railways (NMBS/SNCB) CEO, Sophie Dutordoir, the Wiesenthal Centre Director for International Relations, Dr. Shimon Samuels, recalled his letter of 14 April 2019, in support of the campaign launched by the Royal Society for Jewish Welfare (RSJW) in Antwerp. This campaign seeks a just acknowledgement of the NMBS/SNCB deportation of 25,431 Jews from the Mechelen/Breendonk concentration camps directly to their murder in the Auschwitz gas chambers.
“An apology is inadequate... Yann Moix should be proactive, by publicly denouncing contemporary notorious French antisemites, such as Alain Soral and Dieudonné.”
Paris, 4 September 2019
The French weekly L’Express exposure of celebrated novelist, Yann Moix’s expressions thirty years ago of antisemitism and Holocaust denial - a crime under French law - has engendered an uproar in intellectual circles.
Moix, who has reportedly been criticized for uncomplimentary remarks about “over 50 year-old women” and is now suing his family, apparently for abuse during his childhood, following indirect claims he made in his autobiographical novel.
Now, at 51, he has apologized for his caricatures and sick Holocaust jokes of when he was 21.
An example speaks of a Jew bargaining the cost of his deportation ticket to a concentration camp.
L’Express’ revelation also resulted in Moix’s withdrawal of his latest novel, “Orléans”, from distribution, confirmed by his well-respected publisher Grasset.
While his friend, Jewish intellectual Bernard-Henri Lévy, has accepted Moix’s apology, various Jewish organizations are less forthcoming.
The Simon Wiesenthal Centre Director for International Relations, Dr. Shimon Samuels, has suggested that “An apology is inadequate... Yann Moix should be proactive, by publicly denouncing contemporary notorious French antisemites, such as Alain Soral and Dieudonné.”
The Centre is monitoring this story.
“Asked by UNESCO French Ambassador to assist in identifying WWI cemeteries that were destined for World Heritage status, but enlarged in WWII to include Nazi graves, the Centre exposed two such sites... We are now informed that the nomination was dropped definitively.”..."There can be no reconciliation between the Sons of Light and the Sons of Darkness."
Paris, 2 September 2019
In July 2018 at the 42nd World Heritage Committee (WHC) in Bahrain, Wiesenthal Centre Permanent Observer to UNESCO, Dr. Shimon Samuels, questioned a joint Franco-Belgian nomination of 139 World War I cemeteries for World Heritage inscription. The proposal was meant to emphasize reconciliation, especially with Germany, on the centenary of the 1918 armistice.
“Corsica claims no Jew was deported under Nazi occupation... It is therefore even more outrageous to call the Ajaccio event 'a debate on the Jewish Question,' redolent of Hitler's 'Judenfrage'... Denounce the invitation to Sand, as an apology to today’s Jewish community. The Sand theses may not be ‘criminal’, but they are certainly ‘fiction’.”
Paris, 20 August 2019
In a letter to Laurent Marcangelo, Mayor of Ajaccio, Corsica, the Wiesenthal Centre’s Director for International Relations, Dr. Shimon Samuels, expressed "concern at learning from one of our Corsican members that the guest speaker to this year’s Ajaccio 'Crime Fiction' festival - reportedly attended by thousands of people - was Shlomo Sand, ex-Tel Aviv University."
Read more: The Wiesenthal Centre Protests “The Jewish and...