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U.S. Holocaust Memorial Council Urged to Resign Immediately

December 26, 1980
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The Generation After (TGA), an organization of predominantly children of Holocaust survivors, whose honorary president is Simon Wiesenthal, demanded today that all timbers of the United States Holocaust Memorial Council resign because of the “shameful chapter in American history, the presence of Nazi criminals in our country.” Steven Rober, TGA chairperson, noted that for 35 years, “the United States government has implemented a policy of giving free shelter to vicious practitioners of Nazi genocide.”

According to TGA, the issue at Nazi war criminals is not being considered on the Council’s agenda “because the Council, incredibly enough, wishes to leave this matter in the hands of the Justice Department.” A Council source, who asked not to be identified, conceded that the matter of the war criminals would not be on the Council’s agenda for the foreseeable future.

Rober pointed out that “To erect a memorial to the millions of Nazi victims on the one hand, and to allow their murderers to walk around free and to live in splendor on the other hand, is a base hypocrisy and an insult to the memory of the dead eleven million innocent men, women and children and to the entire human race.”

The Council, Rober added, “has no moral right to serve this hypocritical purpose if it wants to be the spokesperson for the victims and survivors. In fact, it constitutes a betrayal of the legacy of the Holocaust. One cannot pat the back of the criminal and the victim at the some time.”

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