The Canadian Jewish Congress has strongly protested to the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation plans to “bring to Canada Adolf von Thadden, deputy leader of the National Democratic Party in Germany for the purpose of interviewing him” on a CBC television program.
The letter declared that the Canadian Jewish Congress was “appalled” that any officials of the CBC “should still be thinking in terms of any action that would give any measure of respectability or recognition or a platform to the leader of his German rightwing extremist political party.” The text of the letter, signed by Louis Berman, chairman of the Joint Community Relations Committee of the Canadian Jewish Congress and B’nai B’rith was released today.
Asserting that “any newsworthiness” in von Thadden’s proposed television appearance “would be created by the CBC itself,” the Canadian Jewish Congress declared that “it is an affront to every Canadian to lend the facilities of the national broadcasting system to one whose only criticism of Hitler and Nazism is that they lost the war.”
The letter then cited the “deplorable record” of the CBC “in giving such exposure to persons with a Nazi past and a Nazi present.” The letter cited CBC interviews with Andre Bellefeuille, “an obscure Canadian Nazi,” Otto Skorzeny, an accomplice of Hitler,” and the “shameful interview with George Rockwell,” which “for no reason snatched this hatemonger out of obscurity and enabled him to pollute the Canadian air with obscenities.”
The letter said that such presentations made up “an unfortunate succession of events” leading to only one possible conclusion — “that there are program planners with the CBC who are unable to resist the urge to give publicity to the Nazis” despite the fact “that many graves of victims of Nazism give mute evidence of the horrors and effects of Nazism.”
The letter did not mention a date for von Thadden’s projected visit. However, a Congress official said last month that von Thadden was scheduled to visit Toronto on January 29 and that a mass protest would be organized if the scheduled visit took place.
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