Simon Wiesenthal Center Denounces Deputy PM’s Hitler Comments

The Simon Wiesenthal Center again expressed its distress and disappointment by inappropriate remarks about Adolph Hitler made by a leading Japanese official. According to media reports today,Deputy Prime Minister Taro Aso told colleagues “What matters (in politics) is the results. Hitler, who killed millions of people, was definitely a failure, even supposing that his motives hadbeen right.”

“Inexplicable statements like ‘Hitler’s motives may have been right’, fly in the face of the brutal facts of history. This is just the latest of a troubling list of “misstatements" and aredownright dangerous, lamented Rabbi Abraham Cooper, Associate Dean and Director Global Social Action for the Wiesenthal Center. “These words damage Japan’s reputation at the very time when allAmericans want to show their solidarity with Japan, our sister democracy and ally, following the missile launch from Kim Jong Un’s North Korea,” Cooper continued.

“When will the elite of Japan wake up and acknowledge that they have a ‘Nazi Problem’?” asked Cooper.

The Wiesenthal Center helped to write and produce a Japanese language exhibition called Courage To Remember that presents the heroic efforts of Japanese diplomat Chiune Sugihara and the life ofAnne Frank to provide a compelling historical account of the Holocaust for younger generations. “Perhaps it’s time for Abe and Aso’s government to bring the exhibition to the Japanese Parliamentas a reminder of the genocide and disaster to humanity spawned by Hitler, Nazism, and the Swastika in the 1930s and '40s,” Rabbi Cooper concluded.

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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 the UnitedStates. 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).