The executive secretary of the Holocaust Survivors Association, U.S.A., has issued a sharp attack on Simon Wiesenthal, the famed Nazi-hunter, for having “committed a tragic error” when the Simon Wiesenthal Center presented its Humanitarian Laureate Award to Jeane Kirkpatrick, the U.S. Ambassador to the UN.
In an open letter to Wiesenthal, who is listed as honorary president of the Holocaust Survivors Association, John Ranz accused Kirkpatrick of serving as an “apologist for fascist dictatorships engaged in torture and genocidal mass murder” in El Salvador and Guatemala “where entire villages including women and children are being slaughtered.”
Ranz said Kirkpatrick’s support of Israel cannot “excuse these crimes and her collaboration with these murderous dictatorships …. You commited a tragic error. The true voice of the Holocaust victims and their legacy is with the peasants and the poor and not with the brutal and inhuman landowners and militarists of Central America.”
The award was presented last Sunday night for Kirkpatrick’s action “as a steadfast and loyal friend of the Jewish people committed to the security of the State of Israel, and to the causes held sacred by freedom loving people everywhere.” The Holocaust Survivors Association is active in ferreting out former Nazi war criminals now residing in the U.S. and campaigning for Congressional action to bring these criminals to justice.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
