(2001)
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| Named after | Simon Wiesenthal |
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| Website | http://www.wiesenthal.com |
The Simon Wiesenthal Center (SWC) is a Jewish human rights organization established in 1977 by Rabbi Marvin Hier. According to its mission statement, it is "a global human rights organization researching the Holocaust and hate in a historic and contemporary context. The Center confronts anti-Semitism, hate and terrorism, promotes human rights and dignity, stands with Israel, defends the safety of Jews worldwide, and teaches the lessons of the Holocaust for future generations."
The Center is headquartered in Los Angeles, California. It is accredited as a non-governmental organization (NGO) at the United Nations, the UNESCO, and the Council of Europe.
The Center closely interacts on an ongoing basis with a variety of public and private agencies, meeting with elected officials, the United States and foreign governments, diplomats and heads of state. The Center promotes the prosecution of Nazi war criminals, and fights against extremist groups, neo-Nazism, and hate on the Internet. The Center is also involved in Holocaust and tolerance education. Its "Campus Outreach" division is part of the Israel on Campus Coalition (ICC).
The Center is named after Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal; Hier's relationship with Wiesenthal deteriorated during the 1980s, and in 1993 Wiesenthal unsuccessfully petitioned the Board of Directors for Hier's removal.
Name and leadership
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Simon Wiesenthal
The organization is named after Simon Wiesenthal, a leading Nazi hunter. Simon Wiesenthal had nothing to do with the operation or activities of the SWC other than giving it its name.
The SWC 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. The organization publishes a
seasonal magazine, Response.
Museum of Tolerance
The Center's educational arm, Museum of Tolerance, was founded in
1993 and hosts 350,000 visitors annually. Some of the programs sponsored
by the Museum include:
- Tools for Tolerance
- Teaching Steps to Tolerance
- Task Force Against Hate
- National Institute Against Hate Crimes
- Tools for Tolerance for Teens
Simon Wiesenthal Tolerance Center in New York City
New York Tolerance Center is a professional development multi-media
training facility targeting educators, law enforcement officials, and
state/local government practitioners.
The Simon Wiesenthal Center and its Museum of Tolerance is one of many partner organizations of the Austrian Service Abroad (Auslandsdienst) and the corresponding Austrian Holocaust Memorial Service (Gedenkdienst).
In April 2016, the New York City Council
stopped funding for the Simon Wiesenthal Center's Museum of Tolerance
following the arrest of a former board member who has been accused of
raising $20 million from a city correctional officers' union through
kickbacks. The Simon Wiesenthal Center issued a statement saying that
the member had resigned from its board on June 15, and that the Centre
was unaware of any alleged unethical or illegal activities regarding its
donors.
Moriah Films
Moriah
Films, also known as the Jack and Pearl Resnick Film Division of the
SWC, was created to produce theatrical documentaries to educate both
national and international audiences, with a focus on contemporary human
rights and ethical issues and Jewish experience. Two films produced by
the division, Genocide (film) and The Long Way Home (1997 film) have received the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature.
Moriah films has worked with numerous actors to narrate their productions. Including but not limited to Elizabeth Taylor, Michael Douglas, Nicole Kidman, Morgan Freeman, Patrick Stewart, and Sandra Bullock.
Office locations
Simon Wiesenthal Center, Los Angeles
The headquarters of the Simon Wiesenthal Center is in Los Angeles. However, there are also international offices located in New York City, Miami, Toronto, Jerusalem, Paris, Chicago, and Buenos Aires.
Through its national and international offices, the Center carries out its above mentioned mission of preserving the memory of the Holocaust.
Simon Wiesenthal Center Annual
Between 1984 and 1990 the Center published seven volumes of Simon Wiesenthal Center Annual, focusing on the scholarly study of the Holocaust, broadly defined. This series is ISSN 0741-8450.
Library and archives
The Library and Archives
of the center in Los Angeles 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.
Search for Nazi war criminals
Efraim Zuroff,
director of the Simon Wiesenthal Center office in Jerusalem, is the
coordinator of Nazi war crimes research worldwide for the Wiesenthal
Center and the author of its annual (since 2001) "Status Report" on the
worldwide investigation and prosecution of Nazi war criminals which
includes a "most wanted" list of Nazi war criminals.
In November 2005, the Simon Wiesenthal Center 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.
Official statements
Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS)
In 2013, the SWC released a comprehensive report on the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions
(BDS) movement, which is a global campaign promoting boycotts of
several types against Israel. The report analyzed the campaign
throughout its various outlets and asserted that the BDS movement is a
"thinly-disguised effort to coordinate and complement the violent
strategy of Palestinian, Arab, and Muslim 'rejectionists' who have
refused to make peace with Israel for over six decades, and to pursue a
high-profile campaign composed of anti-Israel big lies to help destroy
the Jewish State by any and all means". The report also said that the
BDS campaign attacks Israel's entire economy and society, holding all
(Jewish) Israelis as collectively guilty.
France
On March
8, 2007, the head of international relations for the Simon Wiesenthal
Center, Stanley Trevor Samuels, was convicted (and later acquitted in an
appeal) of defamation by a Paris courthouse for accusing the French-based Committee for Charity and Support for the Palestinians (CBSP) of sending funds to the families of Palestinian suicide bombers.
In its filing of the suit, the CBSP labelled the accusations
"ridiculous", stating that its charitable work consisted of providing
aid to some 3,000 Palestinian orphans. The court ruled that documents
produced by the Wiesenthal Center established no "direct or indirect
participation in financing terrorism" on the part of the CBSP, and that
the allegations were "seriously defamatory".
The Wiesenthal Center appealed the court ruling, and the appeal was granted in July 2009.
Iran
After a Canadian newspaper reported upon the 2006 Iranian sumptuary law controversy (based on a report written by Iranian exiles on Iranian religious minorities being forced to wear badges identifying them to Muslims),
the dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, Rabbi Marvin Hier, wrote to
United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan urging the international
community to pressure Iran to drop the measure.
Numerous other sources, including Maurice Motamed, the Jewish member of the Iranian parliament and the Iranian Embassy in Canada, refuted the report as untrue. The National Post
later retracted the original article ("Iran eyes badges for Jews: Law
would require non-Muslim insignia") and published an article, to the
contrary ("Experts say reports of badges for Jews in Iran is untrue").
However, the Simon Wiesenthal Center refused to admit any mistake on
their part and insisted that the widely debunked allegations were true.
Ireland
In January 2004, the Paris branch of the center asked the President of Ireland, Mary McAleese, to suspend the 'Irish Museum of the Year Award' given to the Hunt Museum in Limerick,
until the conclusion of a demanded inquiry into the provenance of a
significant number of items in the collection. He argued that this was
needed due to the close ties of the founders, John and Gertrude Hunt to
the head of the Nazi Party (NSDP-AO) in Ireland, among others, and
British suspicions during the war of espionage activity on the part of
the couple. The center also claimed, 'The "Hunt Museum Essential Guide"
describes only 150 of the over 2000 objects in the Museum's collection
and, notably, without providing information on their provenance - data
that all museums are now required to provide in accordance with
international procedure.'
This essentially accused the Hunt Museum
in Limerick of keeping art and artifacts looted during the Second World
War, which was described as "unprofessional in the extreme" by the
expert Lynn Nicholas that cleared the museum of wrongdoing. The claim was taken so seriously that the examination was supervised by the prestigious Royal Irish Academy, whose 2006 report is available on line.
McAleese, who had been written to by the center, then criticized a Dr.
Samuels of the center for "a tissue of lies", adding that the center had
diminished the name of Simon Wiesenthal.
The center said that it had prepared its own 150-page report in May
2008 that would be published after vetting by its lawyers, but had not
done so as of November 2008. The report was finally made on 12 December 2008.
Israel
A branch
museum in Jerusalem, expected to be completed in 2009, sparked protests
from the city's Muslim population. The museum is being built on what
Rabbi Marvin Hier described as "derelict land": a thousand-year-old
Muslim graveyard called the Mamilla Cemetery,
much of which has already been paved over. The complaints were
rejected by Israel's Supreme Court, leading to a demonstration by
hundreds of people in November 2008.
On November 19, 2008 a group of US Jewish and Muslim leaders sent a
letter to the Wiesenthal Center urging it to halt the construction of
the museum on the site.
As of February 2010, the Museum of Tolerance's plan for
construction has been fully approved by Israeli courts and is proceeding
at the compound of Mamilla Cemetery. The courts ruled that the compound
had been neglected as a spiritual site by the Muslim community, in
effect not functioning as a cemetery for decades (while simultaneously
used for other purposes), and was thus mundra, i.e. abandoned, under Muslim laws.
Canada
The Centre faults the Government of Canada's
efforts to investigate and prosecute Nazi war criminals, and claims
that approximately 2,000 Nazi war criminals obtained Canadian
citizenship by providing false information.
United States
The Simon Wiesenthal Center opposed the construction of Park51, a Muslim community center, two blocks from Ground Zero.
The executive director of the Simon Wiesenthal Center's Museum of
Tolerance in Manhattan, Rabbi Meyer May said it was "insensitive" to
locate the centre there. The Jewish Week noted that the Center itself was once accused of intolerance when it built a museum in Jerusalem on land that was once a Muslim cemetery, after gaining approval from Israeli courts.
Vatican
The Simon Wiesenthal Center welcomed the news that the Vatican has demanded that Bishop Richard Williamson recant his views denying the Holocaust before being re-admitted to the Roman Catholic Church.
Williamson was one of the four priests from the Society of St. Pius X
who were excommunicated 20 years ago for taking part in the consecration
of Bishops contrary to Canon Law.
Venezuela
The Simon Wiesenthal Center criticized Hugo Chávez
for various statements, including his January 2006 statement that
"[t]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, according to Forward.com, 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. The Wiesenthal Center's representative in Latin America replied that Chávez's mention of Christ-killers was "ambiguous at best" and that the "decision to criticize Chávez had been taken after careful consideration".
Japan
"Sunday Project" controversy
The Simon Wiesenthal Center strongly denounced politician-journalist Soichiro Tahara for his remarks against former Prime Minister Kakuei Tanaka and his daughter, former Foreign Minister Makiko Tanaka on his TV Asahi program "Sunday Project" in March 2009.
In the live broadcast, Tahara told Tanaka that her father, former
Prime Minister Kakuei Tanaka was "done in by America, by the Jews and (Ichiro) Ozawa, (then-leader of the Democratic Party of Japan) too, was done in (by America and/or the Jews)."
Kishidan Nazi outfit controversy
SWC's associate dean, Rabbi Abraham Cooper, condemned the Japanese band Kishidan
for wearing uniforms resembling those of the SS, the armed wing of the
Nazi party. The band wore military-inspired uniforms, adorned with the
German medal Iron Cross and Nazi insignia such as the death skull and SS
eagle on MTV Japan's primetime program "Mega Vector." Cooper said in a written protest to the band's management company Sony Music Artists, MTV Japan and the Japanese entertainment group Avex
(Kishidan's label at the time being and also the current one) that
"there is no excuse for such an outrage" and that "many young Japanese are "woefully uneducated" about the crimes against humanity committed by Nazi Germany and Japan during the second world war, but global entities like MTV and Sony Music should know better".
As a result, Sony Music Artists and Avex issued a joint statement of public apology on their respective websites.
South Korea
On
November 11th 2018, Rabbi Abraham Cooper, the Associate Dean and
Director of Global Social Action of the Simon Wiesenthal Center
denounced BTS
with the following statement: “Flags appearing on stage at their
concert were eerily similar to the Nazi Swastika. It goes without saying
that this group, which was invited to speak at the UN, owes the people
of Japan and the victims of the Nazism an apology.”
References in popular culture
The center is featured in the real-life-story-based Freedom Writers. An exterior view of the center is given, and there are scenes inside the museum, showing simulation entrances to gas chambers in death camps.
