Tomorrow, January 27th, diplomats at the United Nations and leaders across Europe will gather for International Day ofCommemoration in Memory of the Victims of the Holocaust.
But the international community must go beyond solemn moments of silence and begin to speak out against global anti-Semitism,including Iran's State-sponsored Holocaust denialcampaign that denigrates the victims of the Shoah, demonizes theJewish people and the State of Israel.
That campaign includes animated videos based on a notorious 2008 Iranian book of Holocaust denial cartoons whose preface brazenly seeks to“denounce the conspicuous lie of the ‘planed [sic] murder of 6 million Jews during the Second World War’ allegedly called ‘Holocaust’."
In recent days, the Simon Wiesenthal Center has succeeded in getting YouTube to remove most of these anti-Semitic and Holocaust denial animatedvideo cartoons from its link on an Iranian website –watch videos
The Simon Wiesenthal Center has also:
•Called upon UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon and other leaders to use the International Holocaust Memorial Day commemorations to denounce theIranian regime's Holocaust denial campaign
•Alerted Facebook about a vicious bigot in Tehran promoting violence against Jews - his page was immediately removed
•Generated public awareness through a series of op-eds and news releases in the US and Europe
History confirms that left unchallenged, anti-Semitic libels ultimately ignite anti-Jewish acts. Thirty-five years after the Simon Wiesenthal Center wascreated to fight anti-Semitism and preserve the memory of the Shoah our work never been more critical.
