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SWC DEMANDS GREEK AUTHORITIES ACT AFTER HOLOCAUST MEMORIAL DESECRATION

In a letter to Greek Justice Minister, Sotirios Hatzigakis, the Simon Wiesenthal Centre's Director for International Relations, Dr Shimon Samuels, protested the desecration of the memorial to Holocaust victims on the Greek island of Rhodes by local teenagers, shown in a YouTube video as urinating on this monument to the island's 1,604 Jews killed by the Nazis.

Samuels noted that "this scandalous video, now removed from the website, showed the youth's face masked by an Israeli flag overlaid by the danger symbol of a red circle with a slash through it."

The perpetrators allegedly stated, "We are a secret group of students of the 'Venetoklio' High School of Rhodes that does not digg [sic] at all the Jews who wish to turn the island [of Rhodes] into a second 'Land of Canaan.' (...) After all the propaganda fed even in Religion school books, over the 'chosen people' and other bullshit, we have decided to take the situation into our own hands and show to everyone with deeds of how much do we really agree with this view."

Samuels added that "the clip had featured rock music that menaced the tiny Jewish community left on Rhodes, glorified Adolf Hitler and Auschwitz to background screams of 'Juden raus!'."

The letter pointed out that "the memorial abuts the synagogue in a section of Rhodes once known as 'Little Jerusalem', populated for five centuries by a proud Greek Sephardic community that numbered over 6,000 before the Holocaust."

Samuels recalled that, "during the German occupation, Turkey's Consul General - 'righteous Gentile' Selhattin Ulkumen - saved 42 Rhodes Jews by giving them Turkish documents." (...) "Ironically, that is the number of Jews left on the island today."

The Centre urged the Minister "to keep Greek obligations to the European Union, the Council of Europe and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe," continuing, "These require your government to promptly arrest the perpetrators of this obscenity, apologize for this offence to the Jewish people, reinforce security measures to defend community institutions and strenuously embark on a Holocaust educational campaign for Greek youth."

"An inadequate response to this outrage will be construed as an endorsement for antisemitism," concluded Samuels.

Currently attending the Stephen Roth Institute's International Seminar on Antisemitism at Tel Aviv University, Shimon Samuels may be reached for further information at +972.507.461288 or +33.609.77.01.58.

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