Wiesenthal Centre Slams Nobel Literature Prize Candidate Who as Reported Would Sully the Nobel Award as “A Prize for Hate!”

Paris – In a letter to PermanentSecretary of the Swedish Academy, Mats Malm, the Wiesenthal Centre’s Director for International Relations, Dr. Shimon Samuels, noted that, “your October meeting will establish a checklist ofcandidates, for the 2020 prestigious Nobel Prize in Literature. Among them is bruited Portuguese author, António Lobo Antunes.”

The letter continued, “In 2005, Lobo was invited to Israel to receive the Jerusalem Prize for the Freedom of the Individual inSociety. Back in Portugal, in October 2006, he was interviewed by Pública on his impressions of Israel as a Jewish State”... ”That article can be read as a ferocious attack of contempt anddisgust.”

Samuels argued that, "this was marked, reportedly, by what Lobo called ‘their omnipresent obsession with the Shoah'...The WiesenthalCentre considers this language as Holocaust banalization – recognized as a form of antisemitism under the IHRA Definition (International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance).”

Lobo Antunes seems to have complained about the security check on arrival at Ben Gurion international airport... he felt “apermanent climate of fear” and that, “the State of Israel was created on hatred”... “They hate the Germans... The Holocaust always, always, always... They took me to the German quarter, I askedmy guide ‘where are the Germans?’... he responded ‘we have thrown them all out!’...”

Lobo, apparently, continued, “I was shocked to learn that they never have sex with non-Jews”... “I was also shocked by the Saturday,when everything is deserted, and you cannot drive cars”... “I thought the Promised Land was beautiful, but it is made of stones and sand – all is yellow!”

The Pública interviewer asked: “why did you not raise these feelings in Israel?”...His quoted response, “I thought it would beconsidered indelicate!... I was invited there, treated as a very important person.”

Samuels claimed that, “Lobo Antunes uses Jewish characters in several of his novels. Sadly he, apparently, had other feelings whenfacing some real Jews in the Jewish State. In the last fourteen years, he has not publicly retracted or seemed to express remorse or apology for his apparent antisemitism.”

The Centre called on the Permanent Secretary, “to bring these findings to the Swedish Academy meeting and to disqualify António LoboAntunes’ candidacy for the Nobel Prize for Literature.”

“Lobo Antunes, as reported, would sully the Award, and the Prize could be viewed as a "Laureate for hate," concludedSamuels.

For further information, contact Dr.Samuels at csweurope@gmail.com, join the Center on Facebook, or follow @simonwiesenthal for news updates sent directly to yourTwitter feed.

The Simon Wiesenthal Center is one of the largestinternational Jewish human rights organizations with over 400,000 member families in the United States. It is an NGO at international agencies including the United Nations, UNESCO, the OSCE, theOAS, the Council of Europe and the Latin American Parliament (Parlatino).