Simon Wiesenthal Center

The Simon Wiesenthal Center is an international Jewish organization that declares itself to be a human rights group dedicated to preserving the memory of the Holocaust by fostering tolerance and understanding through community involvement, educational outreach and social action. The Center deals with important contemporary issues including racism, anti-Semitism, terrorism and genocide and is accredited as a non-governmental organization (NGO) both at the United Nations and UNESCO.

The organization is named after Simon Wiesenthal, a former engineer and an Austrian Jew who lost many family members in the Holocaust, and later pledged to hunt down Nazis and bring them to justice.

The Center is headed by Rabbi Marvin Hier, its Dean and Founder. Rabbi Abraham Cooper is the Associate Dean and Rabbi Meyer May is the Executive Director.

Established in 1977, the Center closely interacts on an ongoing basis with a variety of public and private agencies, meeting with elected officials, the U.S. and foreign governments, diplomats and heads of state. Other issues that the Center deals with include: the prosecution of Nazi war criminals, fighting against ODESSA networks; Holocaust and tolerance education; Middle East Affairs; and extremist groups, neo-Nazism, and hate on the Internet.

The Simon Wiesenthal Center and its Museum of Tolerance is one of many partner organizations of the Austrian Association for Service Abroad (Auslandsdienst) and the corresponding so-called Austrian Holocaust Memorial Service (Gedenkdienst).

Office locations

The headquarters of the Simon Wiesenthal Center is in Los Angeles. However, there are also international offices located at the following cities: New York, Miami, Toronto, Jerusalem, Paris, and Buenos Aires.

Through its national and international offices the Center carries out its above mentioned mission of preserving the memory of the Holocaust.

Library and archives

The Library and Archives of the center in L.A. has grown to a collection of about 50,000 volumes and non-print materials. Moreover, the Archives incorporates photographs, diaries, letters, artifacts, artwork and rare books, which are available to researchers, students and the general public.

Located Ex-Nazis

In November 2005, the Simon Wiesenthal Center located Aribert Heim, who had been hiding in Spain for 20 years. The same month, it also gave the name of four suspected former Nazi criminals to German authorities. The names were the first results of Operation Last Chance, a drive launched that year by the center to track down former Nazis for World War II-era crimes before they die of old age. ^*.

Criticism

It has been described by Jewish-American political scientist Prof. Norman G. Finkelstein as "a gang of heartless and immoral crooks, whose hallmark is that they will do anything for a dollar." He alleges in his book The Holocaust Industry that the Center's headquarters in Los Angeles are run as a family business, and that in the mid 1990's they were collectively earning $525,000 a year.^*

The Simon Wiesenthal Center criticized Hugo Chávez for his controversial statements, including his January 2006 statement that “^*he world is for all of us, then, but it so happens that a minority, the descendants of the same ones that crucified Christ, the descendants of the same ones that kicked Bolívar out of here and also crucified him in their own way over there in Santa Marta, in Colombia. A minority has taken possession all of the wealth of the world...”. The Simon Wiesenthal Center omitted the reference to Bolívar without ellipsis, stated that Chávez was referring to Jews, and denounced the remarks as antisemitic by way of his allusions to wealth. Meanwhile, the American Jewish Committee, the American Jewish Congress, and the Confederation of Jewish Associations of Venezuela defended Chávez, stating that he was speaking not of Jews, but of South America's white oligarchy. .

In a second case, the dean and associate dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center confirmed a report written by Iranian exiles on Iranian religious minorities being forced to wear badges identifying them to Muslims. The confirmation resulted in the Canadian National Post newspaper printing a highly critical article on Iran that created an international uproar. Upon further investigation, the new Iranian sumptuary law proved to be totally false and the confirmation totally unfounded.

Notes

External links

Haaretz 11/03/05

Anti-Semitism | Jewish organizations