SIMON WIESENTHAL CENTRE

European Office, registered as Non-profit organization in France under the

law of 1901

66 rue Laugier - 75017 Paris

Tel: +33.147.23.76.37 - Fax: +33.147.20.84.01

 

 

Madam Emma Bonino, Minister for Europe

Council of Ministers

Rome, Italy

 

 

Paris and Venice, 16 May 2007

 

 

segreteriaminbonino@governo.it

 

 

Madam Minister,

 

The Simon Wiesenthal Centre is an international Jewish human rights

organization with a worldwide membership of 440,000. Established in 1977,

with headquarters in Los Angeles, it draws the lessons of the Holocaust to

the analysis of contemporary issues of prejudice and discrimination. The

Centre is an NGO in consultative status to the United Nations, UNESCO, the

OSCE, the Organization of American States and the Council of Europe.

 

We are well aware, from our several meetings with you at the European

Parliament and the Inter-Parliamentary Union, of your battle against

intolerance and of your sensitivity to history.

 

Indeed, both the European Parliament and the Commission have expressed a

clear consensus against the denial of the Holocaust and apologia for

genocide, campaigning for countermeasures among all member-states.

 

You will be alarmed to learn that a principal motor for such revisionism in

Europe is the University of Teramo's so-called "Enrico Mattei" Master

programme in Middle East Studies, chaired by Claudio Moffa.

 

Moffa claims "to furnish a consciousness of the complexity of the Middle

East and Mediterranean region and its conflicts, to preserve, empower and

develop in such professional fields a dialogue between civil society and

different countries through culture, history, religion and economic

development", to train "experts destined for political-diplomatic careers,

peace-keepers, journalists and correspondents on immigration and

interculturalism for the Mediterranean - Middle East region, experts on

questions of energy related to the oil market"

(http://www.mastermatteimedioriente.it).

 

His website is vaunted as "The Middle East without Taboos", but hardly

addresses the subjects listed in his abovementioned mission statement.

Contributors, among them the Iranian and Syrian Ambassadors to Italy,

fixate obsessively on the State of Israel as the root of the world's evils.

 

Most discordant to University gravitas is his notice on the website,

"Dracula Arrives at Teramo 18 May at 3.30 pm." "Dracula" is convicted

French Holocaust denier Robert Faurisson, renowned for his abuse of the

classroom to dismiss the gas chambers of Auschwitz as a fabrication.

 

Madam Minister, our Centre together with the Italian Institute for

Historical Studies - Olokaustos, urge you to impress upon the Teramo

University administration their moral obligation to cancel Faurisson's

appearance on their campus. Moreover, those authorities should withdraw

their auspices from Moffa's programme which, in hijacking Middle East

Studies as a vehicle for hate, is a debasement of intellectual integrity.

 

To welcome Faurisson is an embarrassment to Italian academia, offends the

families of Italian martyrs who fell in fighting the scourge of fascism,

abuses the name of the resistance hero Enrico Mattei, and encourages a

perverse propaganda - ostensibly on the pretext of freedom of expression -

to incite a new generation to antisemitism and racist doctrine.

 

Madam Minister, you have often addressed this dark period of Europe's past.

To deny it is to repeat it. Italy's record of anti-Nazi resistance in World

War Two must not be desecrated.

 

 

Most respectfully,

 

Dr Shimon Samuels

Director for International Relations

Simon Wiesenthal Centre, Paris

 

Giovanni De Martis, President

Giovanni Costantini, Vice-President

Italian Institute for Historical Studies - Olokaustos, Venice

 

 

CC:

Rabbi Marvin Hier, Dean and Founder, Simon Wiesenthal Centre, Los Angeles

Rabbi Abraham Cooper, Associate Dean, Simon Wiesenthal Centre, Los Angeles