Wiesenthal Center Urges Kaunas, Lithuania Mayor to Cancel or Restrict Upcoming Neo-Nazi March
Jerusalem-The Simon Wiesenthal Center today urged Andrius KupÄinskas, the mayor of Kaunas, Lithuania, to cancel the upcoming neo-Nazi...
“In the country of Hitler and Eichmann, 'Hang the journalists, like with the Jews' is hardly a casual remark, out of ignorance ornaiveté.”
In a letter to London Mayor, Boris Johnson, the Simon Wiesenthal Centre Director for International Relations, Dr. Shimon Samuels, addressedhim in his capacity as “Chair of 
the Local Management Committee (LMC) of the EU European RegionalDevelopment Fund (ERDF).
The ERDF website states, on governance, that this Committee ‘makes recommendations for awarding funding.’
Samuels noted, “The ERDF provides significant funding through its Interregio programme to the Austrian municipality of Gföhl, a town of 4,000inhabitants in the Krems-Land district of Lower Austria.”
The letter pointed to “Gföhl’s Mayor, Karl Simlinger as alleged to have stated, regarding journalists who write onbehalf of asylum-seekers, that ‘they should be hanged, like the Jews.’”
Samuels emphasized, “A Mayor in Austria — the birthplace of Hitler and Eichmann and the home of our late mentor, Nazi investigator SimonWiesenthal — could hardly make such a remark casually, out of naiveté or ignorance.”
The Centre urged Mayor Johnson “to suspend all ERDF funding to the city of Gföhl until its City Council — on the basis of the currenttestimony by two of its members — takes the only possible action: to divest Mr. Simlinger of his position and proceeds to naming a new and less prejudiced Mayor.”
For further information please contact Shimon Samuels on 00(33)609770158,
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The Simon Wiesenthal Center is one of the largest international Jewish human rights organizations with over 400,000 member families in theUnited 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).