WIESENTHAL CENTER LAUDS UN RESOLUTION TO CREATE INTERNATIONAL HOLOCAUST DAY

The Simon Wiesenthal Center, a leading Jewish human rights organization named in honor of the late Nazi hunter, hailed today’s unanimous United Nations resolution to establish January 27^th as International Holocaust Day.

"Today’s UN resolution is a timely and sobering reminder that the international body was itself created to defeat Nazism and to ensure that the crime of genocide would never again be perpetrated on the survivors of the Holocaust or any other peoples," said Rabbi Abraham Cooper, associate dean of the Center.

"Tragically, Holocaust denial is increasingly becoming a staple of extremism and antisemitism world wide," continued Cooper. "Just last week, Iranian Television, on the heels of President Ahmadinejad’s genocidal threat to "wipe Israel of the map," broadcast a one hour film entitled Holocaust, in which it denied that millions of Jews were murdered in the Nazi gas chambers," he added.

The UN resolution also sets a Holocaust remembrance educational program to prevent similar genocidal crimes in the future. The Simon Wiesenthal Center, as an NGO (non-governmental organization) with the UN, is pledging to work with the UN and individual member states to develop appropriate educational materials. Mark Weitzman, Director of the Center’s Task Force Against Hate and the Center’s Chief Representative to the UN, hopes that UN member states will, "translate their support of the resolution into concrete activities in the field of Holocaust remembrance. The Simon Wiesenthal Center offers its fullest assistance in this regard."

The Wiesenthal Center’s educational arms, the Museum of Tolerance in Los Angeles, the New York Tolerancenter a few blocks from UN Headquarters, and the upcoming Center for Human Dignity in Jerusalem, carry out the legacy of Simon Wiesenthal who worked tirelessly in memory of the victims of the Holocaust and championed the cause of human rights everywhere.

For more information, please contact the Center's Public Relations Department, 310-553-9036, or visit www.wiesenthal.com or www.museumoftolerance.com.