Tag: Holocaust denial

The Spanish Government bets for the Hebrew-Sephardic cultural heritage

Madrid

Resultado de imagen de MARTA TORRADO GRUPO POPULARhttp://www.lacerca.com/noticias/espana/grupo_popular_pide_impulsar_difusion_herencia_cultural_sefardi-353695-1.html

Culture spokeswoman Marta Torrado of the Popular Parliamentary Group on Tuesday defended a motion by her group urging the government to give impetus to projects aimed at spreading the Hebrew-Sephardic cultural heritage to highlight its legacy as a part Indispensable of our identity.

The initiative of the Popular Party, which has been approved in the Committee on Culture by a majority, without any vote against and with the abstention of the PSOE, recalls two key events of recent years. On the one hand, the reunion of the two cultures sealed by the Kings of Spain in 1992, when the V Centenary of the expulsion of the Jews was commemorated and, on the other hand, Law 12/2015, in matters of the granting of nationality Spanish to the descendants of the Jews expelled 500 years ago.

Marta Torrado has stated that “Sephardic Jews have been authentic ambassadors of our country, of Sefarad, for over five centuries, a phenomenon that is not comparable in the world” and has assured that “its dispersion led to a cultural impoverishment from Spain”.

During her speech at the Commission, the popular senator recalled that it was in the mid-nineteenth century that the most liberal and progressive sectors related the Spanish decline with pressure exerted by religious intolerance. “It was then that the expulsion of the Jews in 1492 and its harmful consequences was put as the maximum exponent of the intolerance”, it has pointed out.

He also highlighted the impact of the war in Africa and the story of the soldiers who landed on those lands, who were surprised by the cheers with which they were hailed and received as true liberators.

Torrado also wanted to put in value that it was a senator, Angel Pulido, who for the first time brought to the Upper House, in 1903, the reality of the Sephardic Jews. It also highlighted the first agreement signed with Greece in 1916, thanks to which Spain took under its protection the Sephardic of Spanish origin.

Thanks to the agreement signed between Spain and Greece, the Sephardi were treated as nationals and it was established that in the case of disputes over them or their property, it was the Spanish diplomats in the Hellenic country who lent them assistance and defense.

According to the Culture spokesperson of the GPP, this treaty was “a crucial step” because from that moment the Sephardic of Spanish origin could obtain the Spanish passport, although it did not imply the recognition of the nationality.

Finally, Marta Torrado has emphasized the role played by figures such as Sanz Briz, Romero Radigales, Ruiz de Santaella, Julio Palencia, Rolland de Miota and Eduardo Propper, who contributed to save thousands of Jews from the camps. Nazi extermination and therefore are recognized as Righteous among the Nations in the World Center for Documentation and Commemoration of the Holocaust.

Yad VaShem asks to Amazon to stop selling Shoa denial books

Madrid

yad-vashem

http://cultura.elpais.com/cultura/2017/03/01/actualidad/1488355586_309627.html

The Jewish Holocaust Museum in Jerusalem, Yad Vashem, embarks again on a battle against the Holocaust deniers. On this occasion Robert Rozett, the director of his library – the one who owns the most complete collection of the world on everything published about the genocide committed by the Nazis – has written to the Director General of Amazon, Jeff Bezos, to ask him personally to take measures That prevent the sale on their platform of books that “deny, distort and trivialize the Holocaust”, says verbatim. “I have sent an email to his personal account, a letter addressed to him to the company’s mailing address in Seattle and also an email through Amazon customer service, to be sure that our request reaches His destiny, “Rozett admits in conversation with EL PAÍS.

They have not made a list of titles to withdraw – they will do later, they confess – but they have offered their help to the North American online sales giant to identify the publications to be withdrawn and have included in the missive three concrete examples that they would like Amazon to leave To sell immediately on their different websites: Richard Harwood’s well-known book Did six million really died ?, which calls into question that six million people actually died in the concentration camps of Hitler’s Germany during World War II ; The Hoax of the Twentieth Century: The case against the presumed extermination of European jewry, written by Arthur R. Butz, who maintains that the mass extermination in Auschwitz did not occur and for that reason the allies could not have knowledge of him and by The Leuchter Reports: Critical Edition by Fred A. Leuchter and others, commonly known as the Leuchter Report and conceived to call into question the existence of gas chambers in Nazi concentration camps.

Years ago, when the American company began to take off, Yad Vashem already contacted the company’s management to ask them not to be complicit in the distribution of books that “foment hatred and feed anti-Semitism,” says Rozett, but The firm shielded itself in freedom of expression so as not to withdraw them.

In some countries, such as Germany – where Holocaust denial is a crime – Amazon does not distribute those books. Nor does it in its subsidiaries in Spain, Italy or France but in the United States and the United Kingdom where, for Rozett, there is also a border between legal and correct that should not be passed, although denying genocide Jewish, is not classified as illegal. “It may be legal, but it is not right or is it right to profit from material that encourages hatred? Should you make money at any price? “Asks the director of the Library of Yad Vashem who, like Amazon, defend the sale of such publications for the sake of freedom ..

Therefore, the director of the Library of the Holocaust Museum assures that, even if they do not receive a response from Amazon, they will not cease their efforts to withdraw from the market all those publications that question the organized and large-scale extermination committed by the Nazis. “Especially now that we’re seeing how in the last two weeks there’s a surge in violence against Jews in the United States,” Rozett says.

It refers to the false bomb threats received in February by at least 11 American Jewish centers and the desecration of a Jewish cemetery last week in the suburbs of St. Louis and in the reconstruction of which Muslim activists are also collaborating Defend multi-religious coexistence.