PASSOVER: A TIME TO MAKE A DIFFERENCE

Dear Friends,

If there is anything the Jews have contributed to history, it is the importance of memory.  We have survived only because we remember. We begin Passover each year by singing with our families and friends the verse from the Haggadah, “for it was not one man alone who stood up against us but in every generation there are those who will attempt to destroy us.” 

We recall the Crusades, the Pogroms, and the Holocaust. And now in our own time, the new plague of terrorism and the rebirth of antisemitism. But it is not enough to merely remember – we must act as well. And that is what we do at the Simon Wiesenthal Center each and every day around the world.


In Belgium: After copies of "The Protocols of Zion" were sold in a Brussels bookstore, we demanded that the distributors ban the novelized version of the infamous tsarist forgery which portrays the 9/11 attacks and the London and Madrid bombings as a Jewish conspiracy.  Within 24 hours, the head of the book chain advised us that "instructions have been given to remove this book from the shelves and I have asked the distributor to recall the title."


In Canada:  Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Center for Holocaust Studies (FSWC) was successful in removing a terrorist website from Canadian cyberspace. The Arabic language website, hosted by a Canadian server and uncovered by Wiesenthal researchers, exposed the group as a military faction of Fatah in Gaza dedicated to "the liquidation of the Zionist entity - [Israel] politically, culturally, militarily and economically."

In Germany: Following an attack on a Jewish kindergarten in Berlin, we offered to teach German police how to deal with hate crimes and urged Germany to follow France’s lead by sending police officers to the Center’s Museum of Tolerance in Los Angeles to participate in special training programs. The training of France’s police followed calls by Center officials to do a better job protecting Jewish citizens and schools in France.

In Korea: The Wiesenthal Center succeeded in removing from circulation a bestselling book containing antisemitic caricatures depicting Jews as responsible for financing all wars and standing in the way of the advancement of  Korean Americans. We traveled to South Korea to ensure that the antisemitic materials were permanently deleted from a series that has sold over 10 million copies to date and we were successful in having the publishers agree to publish and distribute the Center’s book, “Dismantling The Big Lie: The Protocols of the Elders of Zion” in Korean.

In Austria:  After a 90th birthday party for a former Gestapo operative was thrown
by the governor of Austria's Tyrol province and other local politicians, we demanded their immediate resignations and expressed "anger and frustration" that Tyrol Governor Herwig von Staa and other politicians had gathered to honor Ferdinand Obenfeldner, the former deputy mayor of Innsbruck, who oversaw the Gestapo in that city when atrocities against Jews were carried out during the 1938 "Kristallnacht" pogrom.


In Ukraine: When “Congratulations on the Holocaust” was daubed on a Jewish headstone during an attack on Odessa’s Jewish cemetery and Holocaust memorial, which included the desecration of 300 Jewish headstones, we immediately sent a letter to Ukrainian President Viktor Yuschenko expressing the fear of some Wiesenthal Center members, including those in Ukraine, who have “deep concern regarding the resurgence of antisemitic statements and acts in your country."

In Israel: We strongly condemned the comments of a German Bishop who compared the conditions in the West Bank city of Ramallah to the conditions imposed on Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto, where they were confined before being deported to the Nazi death camps. While on a visit to the Holy Land, which included Israel’s Holocaust memorial and the West Bank, Eishstaett Bishop Gregor Maria Hanke told the German media, “In the morning we saw photographs from the inhumane Warsaw Ghetto, in the evening we drove through the ghetto in Ramallah….It is infuriating.”



In Japan: The Center, working with leaders of Tokyo’s Jewish community forced a publishing company to withdraw a book that libeled the Jewish State and spoke of a Jewish Mafia.  The publishing house, Tokuma, had made huge profits in the 1980’s and early 90’s publishing Henry Ford’s, “The International Jew” and an avalanche of other antisemitic books. Tokuma withdrew the book in question and reiterated its commitment not to renew its old policy of promoting antisemitism for profit.

One final thought. In 1995, the then Chief of Staff of the Israeli Defense Forces, Ehud Barak, participated in a commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the end of the second World War by piloting a plane that flew over Auschwitz concentration camp.  As he flew over the former death camp he said, “we have arrived 50 years too late.” 

The essence of our work is to remember when we can still make a difference. We need your help – we are prepared to do the work, but we cannot do it alone. Your support enables us to stand up to these haters and to protect the safety of Jews and good people everywhere.

Wishing you all a wonderful Passover.

Rabbi Marvin Hier
Dean and Founder
Simon Wiesenthal Center

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