Update on Recent Developments

Wyman Institute Update: July 3 , 2003

  1. We are pleased to inform you that Professor Robert Wistrich, director of Hebrew University’s Vidal Sassoon International Center for the Study of Antisemitism, has joined the Academic Council of the Wyman Institute.

  2. An essay by Wyman Institute director Dr. Rafael Medoff, titled “One Thing Hitler Liked About America,” was published in the National Jewish Post & Opinion on June 27. It commented on the forthcoming publication of ‘Hitler’s Second Book’ (the generally-unknown sequel to Mein Kampf), in which, among other things, Hitler (writing in 1928) praised America’s restrictionist immigration policies.

  3. Academic Council member Dr. Harold Brackman, of the Simon Wiesenthal Center coauthored (with Rabbi Marvin Hier, dean of the Wiesenthal Center) an essay in the Los Angeles Times on June 22, 2003, warning that the forthcoming film, “The Passion,” which was financed, written, and directed by Mel Gibson, may incite antisemitism. The article referred to the role of Christian religious antisemitism in the persecution of Jews throughout history, including the Holocaust. It also noted a New York Times report that Gibson’s father “questions many commonly accepted views of the Holocaust, including whether 6 million Jews were killed.”

  4. Academic Council member Prof. Gil Troy (McGill University) authored an essay in the Jerusalem Post on June 22. Titled “Israel: The Invisible Victim,” it compared a recent Group of Eight statement omitting Israel from the list of countries victimized by terror to the refusal of the Allies, at the October 1943 Moscow Conference, to acknowledge that Jews were victims of Nazi atrocities.

  5. Academic Council member Dr. Efraim Zuroff, director of the Israel office of the Simon Wisenthal Center, was interviewed in the Jerusalem Post on June 19 concerning a Romanian government statement that the Holocaust did not take place in Romania. Dr. Zuroff urged the Romanian authorities to acknowledge their role in the Holocaust and take action “to identify, locate, and bring to trial any unprosecuted Holocaust perpetrator living in Romania.”