January 11, 2006

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Arab Role in Holocaust Overlooked by U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum

Press Conference: January 18, 2006 at 2pm.
National Press Club, Edward R. Murrow Room
529 14th Street NW Washington, DC 20045

Colloquium: January 18, 2006 at 7:30 PM
National Synagogue
1600 Jonquil Street NW Washington DC 20012

Contact: David Betesh (347) 350-7695

(New York, NY) - Several prominent US Jewish academic and social organizations have planned a national meeting to discuss remedies to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum’s failure to document the role Islamic groups played in the Holocaust. This meeting will also discuss the Museum’s silence in response to recent Holocaust denials and Anti-Semitic remarks attributed to Arab leaders. The U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum is an organization heavily funded by the United States government.

“It is a documented fact that Arabs in the Islamic world had a great influence in the Holocaust. This is not opinion, it is not ‘anti-Arab sentiment,’ it is fact,” commented Shelomo Alfassa, executive director of the International Society for Sephardic Progress (ISFSP). The ISFSP is joining with Holocaust Museum Watch (hmwatch.org), AMCHA—The Coalition for Jewish Concerns and other groups to cosponsor the colloquium.

The colloquium, entitled, “Should Arab Anti-Semitism be on the Agenda of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum?” will consider the following points:

• The US Holocaust Museum has made no effort, in either its permanent or temporary exhibits, to educate Americans about the role top Islamic leaders played in the Holocaust.

• The Museum’s exhibit does not display documents, photographs or information regarding the intimate relationship between Hitler and the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem; this includes the Mufti’s role in the extermination of Jewish populations.

• The Museum fails to recognize or discuss the Holocaust-era pogrom known as “The Farhud,” perpetuated by a pro-Nazi coup in Iraq in June 1941.

• The Museum maintains an unspoken taboo on conducting programs or sponsored research regarding The Farhud, deportation of Jews from North Africa to concentration camps, and the interrelationship of the Nazis and Islamic leaders in Egypt, Syria, etc.

There will be a press conference January 18, 2006, at 2pm in the Edward R. Murrow room of the National Press Club in Washington D.C.. Speakers at the press conference include Kenneth Timmerman, the author of Countdown to Crisis: the Coming Nuclear Showdown with Iran, and executive director of the Foundation for Democracy in Iran; Chuck Morse, Massachusetts Republican Congressional candidate and author of The Nazi Connection to Islamic Terrorism; and Shelomo Alfassa, executive director of the International Society for Sephardic Progress.

That evening there will be a colloquium held at 7:30 p.m. in The National Synagogue, Congregation Ohev Sholom Talmud Torah, 1600 Jonquil Street NW, Washington, DC 20012. Colloquium speakers include Congressman Elliot Engel (D-NY), Rabbi Avi Weiss of New York, president of AMCHA, Kenneth Timmerman, Chuck Morse, Shelomo Alfassa, and Edwin Black, the award-winning New York Times best selling author of IBM and the Holocaust and Banking on Baghdad.

Maurice Shohet, a leader of the Iraqi Jewish community who has written about his escape from Iraq, will discuss the need for the Museum to commemorate the 65th anniversary of the Farhud massacre on June 1, 2006. Mr. Fred Zeidman, chairman of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, has been invited to address these concerns.

Approximately 250 persons are expected to attend the meeting.

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Editor's Note: The International Society for Sephardic Progress is based in the heart of the vibrant Near-Eastern Sephardic Community of New York City, a community highly committed to Judaism, made up of 75,000 Syrian, Egyptian, Lebanese, Turkish and North African Jews; one of the largest, strongest, and fastest growing Sephardic communities in the world.

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Grand Mufti of Jerusalem
inspecting Muslim Nazi trained troops.
Courtesy: Edwin Black

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ARTICLE - Political Correctness Trumping
History at the US Holocaust Museum?

Prepared Remarks by Shelomo Alfassa
for the National Press Club
Jan 18, 2006

POST EVENT WEBPAGE

"...I believe, appropriately within the museum's mandate. Indeed, it would be strange if the museum did not focus on such anti-Semitism and Holocaust denial, given the museum's devotion not only to the Holocaust but also to contemporary genocides and given the prevalence in contemporary Arab rhetoric of not only the kind of anti-Semitism that helped lead to the Holocaust but also the calls for genocide that are aimed at the Jews of Israel. "

--Walter Reich in Haaretz 01/26/06

Walter Reich is former director of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum from 1995 to 1998, and now the Yitzhak Rabin Memorial Chair in International Affairs, Ethics and Human Behavior at George Washington University.