March 18, 2003



ITALY/USA:

WIESENTHAL CENTER TO PRIME MINISTER BERLUSCONI: "ITALY'S MUST ACT
AGAINST ANTISEMITIC REVISIONISM OF HOLOCAUST EXHIBIT WHICH INCITES
JEW HATRED"

The Simon Wiesenthal Center, in cooperation with the Italian research
organization "Olokaustos", has protested the abuse of a Holocaust
exhibit, ostensibly honoring the Righteous Gentile, Giorgio Perlasca,
for its "outrageous display of banalization and antisemitic
revisionism."

In a letter to Prime Minister, Silvio Berlusconi, the Center's
International Liaison Director, Dr. Shimon Samuels, noted that:
"Above pictures of Holocaust victims, this State supported museum has
placed photos of 'veiled Palestinian women,' thereby deliberately
endorsing the most extreme elements of Islamic Jew hatred and
neo-Nazi Holocaust denial."

Samuels added: "The only logical nexus between Nazi persecution of
the Jews and contemporary Middle East violence would have displayed
photos of current Jewish victims of suicide bombing and other
atrocities."

The Center urged the Prime Minister "to acknowledge Italy's moral
responsibility to its own Jewish deportees by removing the offending
photos forthwith, condemning the municipal authorities of Carpi and
seeing that immediate legal measures are taken against the Carpi
Museum director on grounds of apologia for genocide."

This episode has highlighted concerns about a new wave of
antisemitism in Italy. Just today, vandals smashed a marble plaque
commemorating the late Israeli prime minister and Nobel Laureate
Yitzhak Rabin in a park in Rome'. The plaque had already been damaged
several times before, with city officials being forced to remove
swastikas and other neo-nazi symbols painted on its white surface.