News Releases 2019
“We Hope UNESCO will take the Necessary Measures for Israel to Return.”
Paris, 14 June 2019
This 15th annual essay competition, co-organized by the Simon Wiesenthal Centre - Europe (CSW), the Association Verbe et Lumière - Vigilance (VetL-V) and the Russian Holocaust Centre (RHC), invites five student laureates to Paris to present their research projects at UNESCO.
(left to right) seated: Holocaust child survivor Robert Créange, Ilya Altman, Rabbi Delphine Horvilleur, Stefania Giannini, François Picard, Francis Kalifat, Graciela Vaserman Samuels ; standing: Sheila Ryan, Amb. Massimo Riccardo, Olga Drozhzhina, Cécile Rivière, Gabriel Paulus, Katharina Bonnenfant, Evgenii Vlasov, Karel Fracapane, Stephane Teicher, Alexeiy Kovalenko, Amb. Claudia Reinprecht, Amb. Alexander Kuznetsov, Alla Gerber, Shimon Samuels, Richard Odier, Victoria Shestakova, Angelina Sudeikina, Alex Uberti, Evelyne Monas.
This year’s winners are from Moscow, St. Petersburg, Saratov and Kostroma... the fifth is an Austrian volunteer at the Russian Holocaust Centre, from Vienna.
Paris, 13 June 2019
In June 2018, the 24th anniversary of the AMIA Jewish Centre bombing, the Wiesenthal Centre co-organized, with the Henry Jackson Society and the Argentine Embassy to the UK, a Hearing at the British Parliament, in regard to the INTERPOL international “Red Notice” arrest warrants for the remaining 5 Iranians complicit in the attack that murdered 85 and left over 300 wounded.
Michael Kaplan QC, an expert on extradition, presented the case for British detention of these suspects – still active in the Tehran regime – pending an immediate Argentine request for extradition, should they step foot on British soil.
The Wiesenthal Centre is negotiating to repeat such a Hearing at the French National Assembly.
“After five years of procrastination, its ruling goes way beyond ‘justice delayed, justice denied!’’’
Paris, 10 June 2019
In a letter to Belgian Minister of Security and Interior, Pieter de Crem, Simon Wiesenthal Director for International Relations, Dr. Shimon Samuels, declared that the Centre’s membership was “appalled at a Belgian Court endorsement of antisemitism by default.”
The letter recalled how, “in July 2014, a Turkish-run restaurant in Sint-Niklaas (Saint-Nicolas), Flanders, placed a notice in French stating, ‘Entry Permitted to Dogs, but to Zionists never!’,” noting that, “added in Turkish, the message was clearer: ‘In this business, we accept dogs, but Jews never!’, based on the Nazi German notices in parks: ‘Entry for dogs = for Jews forbidden!’”
Samuels argued that, “A lawsuit against the perpetrator was apparently immobilized in the court for almost five years,” continuing, “Now we witness the ‘coup de grace’, as tribunal spokesperson, Catherine Colligan, admitted: ‘the case is closed without any chance of follow-up.’”
The Centre claimed, “this was a hate-crime against the Belgian Jewish community and Belgium itself. It represents an encouragement to Islamists across Europe that antisemitic threats are not subject to legal measures – a devastating precedent.”
Mr. Minister, “We urge you to investigate a court that seems to have twisted justice into an endorsement of antisemitism by default. After five years of procrastination, its ruling goes way beyond ‘justice delayed, justice denied!’,” concluded Samuels.
Op-ed by Dr. Shimon Samuels published in The Jerusalem Post
4 June 2019
https://www.jpost.com/Opinion/75th-D-Day-anniversary-A-Jewish-perspective-591594
In June 1940, that same stretch of water had seen “Operation Dynamo,” the evacuation of 338,226 British and French soldiers from the beaches of Dunkirk, cut off and surrounded by German troops.
Men saved from Dunkirk (photo Jerusalem Post Archive).
Born in London one week after V-E Day, I was raised with an enormous respect for the power of water: the 21 miles of the English Channel that saved Britain from a German invasion – as well as the 330,000 British Jews among the 11 million listed for extermination by the Nazis, in their January 1942 Wannsee Protocol.
Op-ed by Dr. Shimon Samuels published in The Jerusalem Post
29 May 2019
https://www.jpost.com/Opinion/New-European-Parliament-challenges-Israel-and-the-Jews-591062
Radical-left parties’ Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) have invited and applauded speakers from Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and spokespersons for terrorism.
A dinner meeting at a European Union leaders summit after European Parliament elections (photo Reuters).
In May 2004, then-Polish president Aleksander Kwasniewski threw a grand party in Warsaw to celebrate the entry of eight East European countries into the European Union – the so-called “enlargement” process.