SIMON WIESENTHAL CENTRE - EUROPE
Tel.: +33-01 47 23 76 37 - Fax: +33-01 47 20 84 01
Email: csweurope@gmail.com 

“Invoke the prestige of your office to contain the revival of concepts once current during the 1941-1944 Finnish alliance with Nazi Germany.”
 
 
In a letter to Finnish President, Sauli Vainamo Niinistö, the Simon Wiesenthal Centre Director for International Relations, Dr. Shimon Samuels, drew attention to Juha Kärkkäinen, founder of the chain of department stores that bears his family name, also apparently, editor in chief of a free newspaper “Magneettimedia” (www.magneettimedia.com) circulated to some 660,000 households throughout the country as also on-line.

Samuels noted that “past editions have featured conspiracy theories regarding allegedly perverse medical effects of certain pharmaceuticals, together with a mix of Holocaust denial and an increasingly poisonous antisemitism, included in such articles as:

   -  The Jews Who Control the Media
   -  Who Owns the Media in 2012?
   -  A Great Video Shows What a Cheat Albert Einstein Really Was!
   -  Zionist Terrorism in Norway
   -  CNN, Goldman Sachs and Zionist Control (translated from the Ku Klux Klan former Grand Wizard, David Duke)
   -  How to Break Down and Dominate the Zionists (translated from David Duke).”

The letter pointed to “the latest edition of July 2013that  sinks to a new low, featuring an article entitled ‘The Great Rabbi Rape Cover-Up’ (translated from the rantings of a so-called Oregon Pastor, Ted Pike). This is accompanied by a vicious antisemitic cartoon, that could have been taken from the 1930’s Nazi ‘Sturmer’. (see below)

Another article, ‘The Zionist Media Deceives Afro-Americans’, implies Jewish responsibility in the U.S. Zimmerman-Travyon case.”

The Centre declared to the President that “despite our celebration of freedom of expression, the Kärkkäinen enterprise is fomenting a grassroots mass outreach campaign that may endanger your small Jewish community and Jewish visitors to Finland,” adding that “the words ‘Jew’ and ‘Zionist’ are used interchangeably in the Magneettimedia screeds and that online comments by readers of each edition now reflect an ever-growing Jew-hatred.”

Samuels reported that “apparently, this scapegoating seems to have begun in the wake of Kärkkäinen’s 2011 obligation to reschedule a 37-million euro debt,” while emphasizing that “the motive may be indicative, but the threat to Finland is self-evident.”

The Centre urged the President “to invoke the prestige of his office to vigorously condemn Kärkkäinen and Magneettiimedia, and take all possible measures to prohibit a pernicious racism that violates anti-discrimination provisions of the European Union, especially the Fundamental Rights Agency's 2004 Working Definition of Antisemitism”

“It behooves Finland to contain this revival of concepts once current during the 1941-1944 Finnish alliance with Nazi Germany. Mr. President, we expect your response to be prompt and unambiguous,” concluded Samuels.

"raiskaavien rabbien"

For further information please contact Shimon Samuels on 00(33)609770158