WIESENTHAL CENTER SLAMS GERMAN BISHOP FOR COMPARING RAMALLAH TO WARSAW GHETTO

The Simon Wiesenthal Center today condemned remarks made by 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 prior to their deportation 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.”

“These remarks are offensive to Jews,” said Rabbi Marvin Hier, founder and dean of the Wiesenthal Center. “Anyone who follows the Mideast conflict knows that Israel would not have established the security fence if the chief tactic of Hamas and other extremists organizations would not have been the deliberate targeting of innocent civilians in buses, restaurants and shopping centers,” he added.

“Comparing Ramallah to the Warsaw ghetto would be like comparing the Crucifixion to the execution of Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann,” he said.