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Comments (1)More than 80 countries signed an agreement to cooperate in the fight against anti-Semitism and Holocaust denial.
The Task Force for International Cooperation on Holocaust Education, Remembrance, and Research and the Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights signed the agreement at Israel’s Foreign Affairs Ministry.
“This agreement is a step that doubles the power of 87 states’ cooperation in the fight against the de-legitimization of Israel and anti-Semitism towards Jews around the world,” said Deputy Foreign Minister Daniel Ayalon, who signed the agreement on behalf of Israel. “There are those who deny the Holocaust and are preparing for the next Holocaust. We must remember the Holocaust so that the horrors will not return, and we will make the world a safer place.”
Israel was selected to lead the task force for the first time in 2010.
The task force, established a decade ago at the initiative of the Swedish government, aims to promote the remembrance of the Holocaust through education, research and memorial sites. It is comprised of 27 member countries, mostly European. Six international organizations belong as observers, including the United Nations and the European Union.
The Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights, which has 57 members, deals with educational programs and monitors instances of xenophobia, mainly anti-Semitism and Islamophobia.
ADL Rips Estonian March Honoring Nazi SS Division
The Anti-Defamation League is urging Estonia officials to condemn a march there honoring a division of the Nazi SS.
The march in Vaivara, the home of the largest of the 22 concentration and labor camps established in Estonia by the Nazis during World War II, is scheduled for July 31 to honor an Estonian division of the Nazi SS that fought in a 1944 battle against Soviet troops.
“Opposing Soviet repression is one thing, but celebrating the Nazi SS is quite another,” said Abraham Foxman, ADL’s national director, in a statement released Wednesday.
“Unfortunately, in the past we have seen Estonian officials participate in such events rather than oppose them.
“Vaivara should evoke mourning and reflection, not celebration,” said Foxman, a Holocaust survivor. “A telling choice once again lies before Estonian officials. They, along with responsible members of Estonian civil society, should unequivocally condemn the planned march in Vaivara.”
Austrian Museum Pays $19 Million for Nazi-Looted Painting
A museum in Austria will pay $19 million to keep a painting looted during the Holocaust.
The Leopold Museum in Austria settled a decade-long legal battle by agreeing to pay the estate of an Austrian Jewish woman, Bondi Jaray, for the painting that a Nazi reportedly stole from her in 1939. Jaray died in 1969, insisting that the painting belonged to her.
U.S. officials seized the painting, “Portrait of Wally” by Egon Schiele, in 1999, two years after it arrived as a loan to New York’s Museum of Modern Art.
The painting reportedly was stolen and later returned to the Austrian government after World War II.