MOT to Display Hitler's First Anti-Semitic Writing
17 oktober 2011, Tisjrie 19, 5772
Bron: http://www.museumoftolerance.com/
MOT to Display Hitler's First Anti-Semitic Writing Exhibition Opening October 4, 2011
This week, the Simon Wiesenthal Center announced that it had acquired the most significant document in its 34-year history. The document, a 4-page letter signed by Adolf Hitler, dated September 16, 1919, six years before the publication of Mein Kampf describes his hatred of Jews outlining his plans which call for, "The uncompromising removal of the Jews altogether," which he says can only be accomplished, "Under a government of National strength and never under a government of National impotence." Hitler warns against an "emotional anti-Semitism which will always find its expression in the form of pogroms" and seeks rather "a legal ... removal of the rights of the Jew."
"What began as a private letter, one man's opinion, twenty-two years later became the 'Magna Carta' of an entire nation and led to the nearly total extinction of the Jewish people. This is an important lesson for future generations," said Rabbi Marvin Hier, Wiesenthal Center Dean and Founder. "Demagogues mean what they say and given the opportunity, carry out what they promise," he concluded.
The document will be on permanent display at the Museum of Tolerance in Los Angeles at the entrance to the Holocaust section, opening in the Fall 2011.
The Wiesenthal Center archives is one of the largest Holocaust collections holding over 50,000 artifacts and memorabilia including photographs, thousands of documents, diaries, letters, artwork, and rare books. These include original letters of Anne Frank, a recreation of Simon Wiesenthal's Vienna office, an original letter written by Albert Einstein, a telephone from the Commandant's office in Auschwitz, and a handmade American flag presented by the inmates of the Mauthausen concentration camp to their American liberators. Many of these archives are currently on display at at the Museum of Tolerance Los Angeles. (Nederlandse vertaling: WW II -Anti-Semitisme in het document Chronologie Christendom, Jodendom, Filosofie, in het jaar 1919 )
Vaticaan en Rode Kruis hielpen duizenden Nazi's ontsnappen
21 juli 2011, Tammuz 19, 5771
Bron: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/may/25/nazis-escaped-on-red-cross-documents
Het Rode Kruis en het Vaticaan http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/vatican hebben na de Tweede Wereldoorlog duizenden Duitse oorlogsmisdadigers en collaborateurs helpen ontsnappen. Dat staat te lezen in het boek Nazis on the Run: How Hitler's henchmen fled justice van Gerald Steinacher van de Harvard University.
Rudolf Hess: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/secondworldwar
Steinacher komt tot die conclusie na het onderzoeken van grote hoeveelheden ongepubliceerd materiaal uit de archieven van het International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC).
Rode kruis: http://www.icrc.org/eng/resources/documents/feature/travel-document-feature-310507.htm
http://www.icrc.org/eng/
Uit de documenten moet blijken hoe massamoordenaars als Adolf Eichmann, Josef Mengele, Klaus Barbie en duizenden anderen erin slaagden uit de handen van de geallieerden te blijven. Door de lijsten met gezochte oorlogsmisdadigers te vergelijken met reispapieren, concludeert Steinacher dat enkel Groot-Brittannië en Canada in 1947 onvrijwillig al zo'n 8.000 voormalige Waffen-SS'ers binnenhaalden. De meesten onder hen beschikten over geldige papieren die bij vergissing waren uitgereikt.
De documenten - die worden besproken in Steinachers boek- geven een significant inzicht in de manier waarop binnen het Vaticaan werd gedacht, vooral omdat de eigen archieven van de Heilige Stoel na 1939 nog altijd niet openbaar zijn. Het Vaticaan heeft ook constant geweigerd zijn positie toe te lichten. Oorlogsmisdadigers kregen bewust valse identiteitspapieren uitgereikt via de Vluchtelingencommissie van het Vaticaan.
Research shows how travel documents ended up in hands of the likes of Adolf Eichmann, Josef Mengele and Klaus Barbie in the postwar chaos
The Red Cross and the Vatican both helped thousands of Nazi war criminals and collaborators to escape after the second world war, according to a book that pulls together evidence from unpublished documents.
Vatican: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/vatican
Rudolf Hess: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/secondworldwar
The Red Cross has previously acknowledged that its efforts to help refugees were used by Nazis because administrators were overwhelmed, but the research suggests the numbers were much higher than thought.
Red Cross: http://www.icrc.org/eng/resources/documents/feature/travel-document-feature-310507.htm
Gerald Steinacher, a research fellow at Harvard University, was given access to thousands of internal documents in the archives of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC). The documents include Red Cross travel documents issued mistakenly to Nazis in the postwar chaos. http://www.icrc.org/eng/
They throw light on how and why mass murderers such as Adolf Eichmann, Josef Mengele and Klaus Barbie and thousands of others evaded capture by the allies.
By comparing lists of wanted war criminals to travel documents, Steinacher says Britain and Canada alone inadvertently took in around 8,000 former Waffen-SS members in 1947, many on the basis of valid documents issued mistakenly.
The documents – which are discussed in Steinacher's book Nazis on the Run: How Hitler's henchmen fled justice – offer a significant insight into Vatican thinking, particularly, because its own archives beyond 1939 are still closed. The Vatican has consistently refused to comment.
Steinacher believes the Vatican's help was based on a hoped-for revival of European Christianity and dread of the Soviet Union. But through the Vatican Refugee Commission, war criminals were knowingly provided with false identities.
The Red Cross, overwhelmed by millions of refugees, relied substantially on Vatican references and the often cursory Allied military checks in issuing travel papers, known as 10.100s.
It believed it was primarily helping innocent refugees although correspondence between Red Cross delegations in Genoa, Rome and Geneva shows it was aware Nazis were getting through.
"Although the ICRC has publicly apologised, its action went well beyond helping a few people," said Steinacher.
Steinacher says the documents indicate that the Red Cross, mostly in Rome or Genoa, issued at least 120,000 of the 10.100s, and that 90% of ex-Nazis fled via Italy, mostly to Spain, and North and South America – notably Argentina.
Former SS members often mixed with genuine refugees and presented themselves as stateless ethnic Germans to gain transit papers. Jews trying to get to Palestine via Italy were sometimes smuggled over the border with escaping Nazis.
Steinacher says that individual Red Cross delegations issued war criminals with 10.100s "out of sympathy for individuals … political attitude, or simply because they were overburdened". Stolen documents were also used to whisk Nazis to safety. He said: "They were really in a dilemma. It was difficult. It wanted to get rid of the job. Nobody wanted to do it."
The Red Cross refused to comment directly on Steinacher's findings but the organisation says on its website: "The ICRC has previously deplored the fact that Eichmann and other Nazi criminals misused its travel documents to cover their tracks."
Wiesenthal Center to Lithuanian Authorities: Desecration of Ponar Memorial to Shoah Victims is Directly Related to Government Efforts to Minimize Local Complicity in Holocaust Crimes
July 12, 2011, Tammuz 10, 5771
Jerusalem-The Simon Wiesenthal Center today harshly criticized the Lithuanian government for trying to hide or minimize the highly-significant role of local Nazi collaborators in Holocaust crimes and attributed last weekend’s desecration of the 
memorial at Ponar, the site of the mass murder of 70,000 Jews during the Holocaust, to the falsification of World War II history by local historians with governmental sponsorship and support.
In a statement issued here today by its chief Nazi-hunter, Israel director Dr. Efraim Zuroff, the Center pointed to the denial at a recent international conference sponsored by the government at the Seimas [Lithuanian Parliament] of the lethal violence launched by Lithuanians against Jews in at least 40 different locations before the arrival of Nazi troops, as an example of the continuing efforts by the authorities to try and conceal the active participation by Lithuanians in the mass murder of Jews during World War II.
According to Zuroff:
“The ongoing government-sponsored and financed distortion, minimization, and downplaying of the critical role played by Lithuanian Nazi collaborators in Holocaust crimes has created an anti-Semitic atmosphere in which slogans such as “Hitler was right,” which was scrawled on the Ponar memorial, seem natural. After all, if as was claimed at the recent historical conference held at the Seimas, Jewish historians such as eminent Hebrew University professor Dov Levin purposely lied about the scope of Lithuanian criminality during the Shoa, such desecrations of Holocaust memorials become almost understandable. The time has come for the European Union to make clear to the Lithuanian authorities that membership obligates them to refrain from distorting the history of World War II for political reasons and to stop the resultant incitement against the local Jewish community.
The Simon Wiesenthal Center is one of the largest international Jewish human rights organizations with over 400,000 member families in the United States. It is an NGO at international agencies including the United Nations, UNESCO, the OSCE, the OAS, the Council of Europe and the Latin American Parliament (Parlatino).
For more information call 00-972-50-721-4156, join the Center on Facebook, www.facebook.com/simonwiesenthalcenter, or follow @simonwiesenthal for news updates sent direct to your Twitter page or mobile device.
“Kill A Jew Day”
15 oktober 2010
Wiesenthal Center Identifies Spike In Virulent Anti-Jewish Facebook Pages
Center says social network hub removing anti-Semitic“as fast as we identify them”
Simon Wiesenthal Center researchers have uncovered over two dozen FACEBOOK sites with titles like “Kill a Jew Year” and “Kill a Jew Day” during the past week alone. “Some have been posted from the United States, others from the United Kingdom,” said Rabbi Abraham Cooper, associate dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center and the director of the Jewish Human Rights NGO’s Digital Terrorism and Hate project. He indicated that the Wiesenthal Center had received numerous complaints about these recent threatening postings and others like them on FACEBOOK (examples are included below). “FACEBOOK officials have been very cooperative in removing these calls for anti- Jewish violence, but the hate continues to sprout at an alarming rate. We know they are committed to thwarting online bigotry, but if such a trend continues, we will urge FACEBOOK and other social networking hubs to track and preempt online bigots more aggressively,” Cooper added.
Wiesenthal Center officials said they were particularly disturbed by these FACEBOOK postings as they were inspired by a national “Kick a Ginger Day” last November 20th, which actually resulted in numerous assaults against redheads.
The Wiesenthal Center’s 2010 annual report on digital terrorism and hate identifies over 12,500 problematic websites, newsgroups and social media postings that promote terrorism, racism, anti-Semitism, Holocaust denial and Islamophobia. “With the world’s embrace of Social networking it is not surprising that haters and those promoting terrorism increasingly focus their efforts online to denigrate their enemies as well as recruit and fundraise for their causes. That is why the Wiesenthal Center has been urging more vigilance by key Internet providers during a series of briefings and meetings with officials at FACEBOOK, Yahoo, Google and YouTube,” Rabbi Cooper concluded.