A gratuitous comment by a leftist, pro-PLO Senator in Uruguay who criticized Jews for persisting in efforts to prosecute Nazi criminals has evoked an angry response from the representative body of Uruguayan Jewry.
According to Rabbi Morton Rosenthal, director of the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith’s Latin American Affairs Department, the Comite Central Israelita denounced efforts to “delegitimize the significance of the Holocaust … as anti-Semitism disguised as humanism.” Rosenthal said the Comite added that “we will not forget that which should not be forgotten, we will not pardon that which should not be pardoned.”
The Senator, Francisco Rodriguez Cammusso, a member of the leftist Broad Front coalition who was elected with the support of the Uruguayan Communist Party, criticized Jews for still pursuing Nazi war criminals “50 years” after the Holocaust.
His comments came during a Uruguayan Senate debate over a proposed law to provide the legal framework for prosecution of those in charge who allegedly were involved in torture and disappearance of Uruguayans during the period of military rule in that country.
Rosenthal said the Senator’s statement came at a time when there has been a sharp increase of Nazi graffiti throughout Montevideo, the nation’s capital.
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