Wiesenthal: Right and Left Extremists Are Resorting to ‘level of Direct Action’

— Left and right political extremists are resorting to the “level of direct action” in a resurgence of neo-Nazism and anti-Semitism in Europe and much of their propaganda material comes from the United States, Simon Wiesenthal declared here. The 72-year-old Nazi-hunter from Austria urged that the U.S. adopt legislation against racial hatred as a means to help prevent the spread of anti-Semitism.

Wiesenthal received a standing ovation from approximately 2500 persons, mainly of college age, at George Washington University here where he spoke Sunday night under the auspices of the B’nai B’rith Hillel Foundation on the campus. The extremists operating in France, Austria, Germany, the Scandinavian countries and other areas of Europe “cannot exist without the printed propaganda” from the U.S., he said. The material is supplied in six languages and is sent to a mailing list of 50,000 addresses in Europe.

Wiesenthal noted that West German police recently raided 2000 apartments late one night and found weapons, munitions and propaganda in the German language printed in the U.S. and also in Canada. The consequences, he said, include the desecration of Jewish cemeteries, daubing swastikas on Jewish buildings and killings of foreigners, including innocent Vietnamese in Hamburg.

Wiesenthal said he found a 15-year-old German boy with a leaflet printed in Lincoln, Neb. He said the boy told him that U.S. policy has changed and Americans now admire Hitler. Speaking of the rights under the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, Wiesenthal said the publishers of hate material in the U.S. are “abusing the freedom they have.” He noted that while there is world-wide cooperation against the drug traffic “no cooperation exists against the poison being supplied to young people and in the schools” in the form of anti-Semitic propaganda.

In response to a student’s question, he urged Americans to write to their Congressmen and to editors to help offset the wave of anti-Semitism now stirring the political climate. He said German authorities have received 3000 letters, most of them “not anonymous” providing information on Nazi activists during World War II.

Responding to a question, Wiesenthal said the American television docudrama “Holocaust” was “very, very important.” He lauded the Swedish diplomat, Raoul Wallenberg who saved 100,000 Jews from the Nazis in Hungary during World War II. He said that Soviet statements that Wallenberg died in prison in 1947 after his arrest by Soviet police in Budapest “up to now are not convincing evidence of his death.”