Simon Wiesenthal Center

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The Simon Wiesenthal Center is an international Jewish organization that declares itself to be a human rights group dedicated to preserving the memory of the Holocaust by fostering tolerance and understanding through community involvement, educational outreach and social action. The Center deals with important contemporary issues including racism, anti-Semitism, terrorism and genocide and is accredited as a non-governmental organization (NGO) both at the United Nations and UNESCO.

The organization is named after Simon Wiesenthal, a former engineer and an Austrian Jew who lost many family members in the Holocaust, and later pledged to hunt down Nazis and bring them to justice.

The Center is headed by Rabbi Marvin Hier, its Dean and Founder. Rabbi Abraham Cooper is the Associate Dean and Rabbi Meyer May is the Executive Director.

Established in 1977, the Center closely interacts on an ongoing basis with a variety of public and private agencies, meeting with elected officials, the U.S. and foreign governments, diplomats and heads of state. Other issues that the Center deals with include: the prosecution of Nazi war criminals, fighting against ODESSA networks; Holocaust and tolerance education; Middle East Affairs; and extremist groups, neo-Nazism, and hate on the Internet.

The Simon Wiesenthal Center and its Museum of Tolerance is one of many partner organizations of the Austrian Association for Service Abroad (Auslandsdienst) and the corresponding so-called Austrian Holocaust Memorial Service (Gedenkdienst).

1 Office locations
2 Library and archives
3 Located Ex-Nazis
4 Criticism
5 External links

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Office locations

The headquarters of the Simon Wiesenthal Center is in Los Angeles. However, there are also international offices located at the following cities: New York, Miami, Toronto, Jerusalem, Paris, and Buenos Aires.

Through its national and international offices the Center carries out its above mentioned mission of preserving the memory of the Holocaust.

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Library and archives

The Library and Archives of the center in L.A. has grown to a collection of about 50,000 volumes and non-print materials. Moreover, the Archives incorporates photographs, diaries, letters, artifacts, artwork and rare books, which are available to researchers, students and the general public.

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Located Ex-Nazis

In November 2005, the Simon Wiesenthal Center located Aribert Heim, who had been hiding in Spain for 20 years. The same month, it also gave the name of four suspected former Nazi criminals to German authorities. The names were the first results of Operation Last Chance, a drive launched that year by the center to track down former Nazis for World War II-era crimes before they die of old age. [1].

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Criticism

It has been described by Jewish-American political scientist Prof. Norman G. Finkelstein as "a gang of heartless and immoral crooks, whose hallmark is that they will do anything for a dollar." He alleges in his book The Holocaust Industry that the Center's headquarters in Los Angeles are run as a family business, and that in the mid 1990's they were collectively earning $525,000 a year.[2]

In January 2006, the Simon Wiesenthal Center was criticized for its accusation[3] of anti-Semitism by the president of Venezuela Hugo Chávez during a speech accusing the United States of imperialistic behaviour.[4] In their report, they heavily edited the original speech, removing clarifying sections to strengthen their accusation.[5] The Confederation of Jewish Associations of Venezuela wrote a letter[6] to the Center, explaining that Chavez was not referring to Jews in his speech, and that the Center acted rashly in making its statement. This view was seconded both by the AJCommittee and the American Jewish Congress. Sergio Widder, a Wiesenthal spokesperson in Latin America, countered that Chavez's statement was ambiguous at best, and that the Center released its statement only after careful consideration.