Centre Simon Wiesenthal - Europe

Paris, 20 July 2010

In a letter to French Interior Minister, Brice Hortefeux, the Simon Wiesenthal Director for International Relations, Dr.Shimon Samuels, expressed grave concern at “a wave of intimidation unleashed, since early 2009 in supermarkets and department-stores across the country, by the so-called ‘Collectif Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions: BDS’”.

The letter noted that “uniformed squads occupy the premises and, under the frightened gaze of staff and shoppers, steal from the shelves of the kosher department all products suspected to be from Israel. Forcing their way to the exits they then proceed to demonstratively burn their loot”.

Paris, 8 July 2010

The sixth annual presentation of Russian Holocaust Essay Laureates convened yesterday in Paris under the auspices of UNESCO.

Co-organized by the Simon Wiesenthal Centre-Europe, Association Verbe et Lumière-Vigilance and the Russian Holocaust Foundation, five students from Moscow, St. Petersburg, Yekaterinburg and Nizhny-Novgorod selected from over 1,000 submissions, presented their research findings.

Paris, 6 July 2010

In a letter to Mayor of Paris suburb of St.Denis, Didier Paillard, the Simon Wiesenthal Centre’s Director for International Relations, Dr.Shimon Samuels, noted that “a shantytown, Hanul, in your city St-Denis, that has been home to over 150 Roma Gypsies for the last ten years, is to be demolished and the residents forcibly removed. With so many Parisians on vacation, the deportation is expected to go by with muted public and media reaction”.