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Simon Wiesenthal Center


Self Description

June 2003: "The Simon Wiesenthal Center is an international Jewish human rights organization dedicated to preserving the memory of the Holocaust by fostering tolerance and understanding through community involvement, educational outreach and social action. The Center confronts important contemporary issues including racism, antisemitism, terrorism and genocide and is accredited as an NGO both at the United Nations and UNESCO. With a membership of over 400,000 families, the Center is headquartered in Los Angeles and maintains offices in New York, Toronto, Miami, Jerusalem, Paris and Buenos Aires. 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; Holocaust and tolerance education; Middle East Affairs; and extremist groups, neo-Nazism, and hate on the Internet."
http://www.wiesenthal.com/about/index.cfm

Third-Party Descriptions

May 2001: 'In the United States, the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith called the Assad remarks poisonous, and Rabbi Marvin Hier, founder of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, said the Syrian was "offering up an almost daily menu of more hate and bigotry."'

http://www.nytimes.com/2001/05/07/world/07POPE.html

June 2011: 'It was February 2000, and anti-neo-Nazi activist Marc Knobel was sitting in Paris, scouring the Internet for Nazi artifacts being sold online. If you search for Knobel's name today, you'll find surprisingly little about him. He doesn't seem to have a website or a Wikipedia entry. But he has a long set of associations with prestigious anti-Semitism monitoring groups like the Simon Weisenthal Center, and his own organization, J'Accuse—"an association fighting against racism and anti-Semitism on the Internet." (The name "J'Accuse" is a reference to the 19th century "Dreyfus affair" in France, in which a Jewish army officer was falsely accused of espionage.)'

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2011/06/how-france-proved-that-the-internet-is-not-global.ars

December 2010: '“Obviously we disagree with them on Holocaust denial,” said Rabbi Abraham Cooper, associate dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center. But Rabbi Cooper said Facebook had done a better job than many other major Web sites in developing a thoughtful policy on hate and harassment.'

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/13/technology/13facebook.html

June 2010: "Zuroff would go on to spend his life hunting Nazis and ensuring their punishment. Now the Israel director of The Simon Wiesenthal Center, he has also worked for the U.S. Justice Department's Office of Special Investigations, which is in charge of Nazi war crimes prosecutions. Since the fall of the Soviet Union, more names of alleged Holocaust criminals have turned up from Lithuania than from anywhere else in Eastern Europe, says Zuroff."

http://www.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/europe/06/03/lithuania.nazi.prosecutions/index.html

January 2007: 'I would venture to say Holocaust issues are the major source of anti-Semitism in post-Communist Europe today,' says Efraim Zuroff of the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Jerusalem, sometimes referred to as 'the world's last Nazi-hunter.'

http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0117/p04s02-woeu.html

Relationships

RoleNameTypeLast Updated
Organization Executive (past or present) Rabbi Abraham Cooper Person Apr 5, 2005
Founded/Co-Founded by Rabbi Marvin Hier Person Sep 4, 2011
Organization Head/Leader (past or present) Founded/Co-Founded by Simon Wiesenthal Person Jan 18, 2007
Organization Executive (past or present) Efraim Zuroff Person Jan 18, 2007

Articles and Resources

Date Fairness.com Resource Read it at:
Jun 22, 2011 Nazi hunting: How France first "civilized" the Internet

QUOTE: France has long attempted to "civilize" the Internet out of things like racism and Nazi ideology by curbing their dissemination. In fact, the first battle in this war concluded a decade ago. The winner was France; the loser was the then-reigning giant of the Web—Yahoo—along with the notion that the Internet is a "global" place that inherently transcends national boundaries.

 Ars Technica
Dec 12, 2010 Facebook Wrestles With Free Speech and Civility

QUOTE: Facebook took down a page used by WikiLeaks supporters to organize hacking attack...But it did not remove WikiLeaks’s own Facebook pages...illustrates the complexities that the company grapples with, on issues as diverse as that controversy, verbal bullying among teenagers, gay-baiting and religious intolerance.

 New York Times
Jun 03, 2010 The Holocaust in Lithuania: One man's crusade to bring justice

QUOTE: Within five months of Nazi Germany's invasion in the summer of 1941, most of Lithuania's 200,000 to 220,000 Jews were dead....The pace of the mass murder of Lithuania's Jews -- and the active participation of the local population -- are meticulously recorded in two of the most infamous documents of Holocaust history.

 CNN (Cable News Network)
Jan 17, 2007 Ex-communist Europe's pursuit of Holocaust justice stirs anti-Semitism

QUOTE: Six decades after World War II, the once-dormant pursuit of Holocaust-related justice is forging ahead in newly democratic central-eastern Europe. Yet the hunt carries a price: It has stirred resentment among a financially struggling populace, which bristles at the multimillion-dollar property claims by their Jewish communities, and sees the harassment of nonagenarians as unnecessary or even cruel.

 Christian Science Monitor
Dec 07, 2006 Carter Book on Israel 'Apartheid' Sparks Bitter Debate: Scholar Resigns From Ga. Center

QUOTE: '[Carter's book] concludes that "Israel's continued control and colonization of Palestinian land have been the primary obstacles to a comprehensive peace agreement in the Holy Land." Kenneth W. Stein, a professor at Emory University, accused Carter of factual errors, omissions and plagiarism in the book.'

 Washington Post
Jun 24, 2003 Court Rejects Law Aiding Survivors of Holocaust

QUOTE: ...the Supreme Court yesterday struck down a California law that sought to force insurance companies to divulge information that might help Holocaust survivors collect benefits from policies sold to their families in Europe before and during World War II.

Washington Post
May 12, 2003 Braziller Brings Controversial Novel to U.S.

QUOTE: Rabbi Abraham Cooper, the associate dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, one of the groups that spearheaded the fight against the book in France, said that he and the organization would try to organize massive protest against an American edition of the book.

 Publishers Weekly
May 07, 2001 Pope, in Damascus, Reaches Out for Unity With Mosque Visit

QUOTE: John Paul II today became the first pope ever to set foot in a mosque....throughout his three-day visit to Syria, local leaders made even bolder efforts to press the Roman Catholic Church to make common cause against Judaism.

 New York Times