The Future of the US Holocaust Memorial Museum

HOLOCAUST MUSEUM WATCH

“The Future of the US Holocaust Memorial Museum: Should Arab Anti-Semitism be on its Agenda?”

January 18, 2006 at 7:30 p.m

Ohev Sholom Talmud Torah-The National Synagogue

1600 Jonquil Street NW, Washington, DC

WASHINGTON DC—Holocaust Museum Watch (www.hmwatch.org), AMCHA (the Coalition for Jewish Concerns), Magen David Sephardic Congregation (Rockville, MD), the Sephardic Holocaust Project and the International Society for Sephardic Progress are co-sponsoring a forum to discuss the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum’s failure to document the role Arabs and Islamic groups played in the Holocaust, as well the Museum’s silence on the role extreme Islamic groups have played in Holocaust denial and in recent anti-Semitic attacks worldwide.

Participants will include U.S. Rep. Eliot Engel (D-NY), Rabbi Avi Weiss of New York, president of AMCHA, Chuck Morse, author of The Nazi Connection to Islamic Terrorism and Massachusetts Republican Congressional candidate in the 4th District, Shelomo Alfassa, executive director of the International Society for Sephardic Progress, Edwin Black, the award-winning New York Times best selling author of IBM and the Holocaust and Banking on Baghdad, and Maurice Shohet, a leader of the Iraqi Jewish community.

The forum will address the following issues:

  • The U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum has made no effort in their permanent or temporary exhibits or on its website to educate Americans about the role Arab leaders played in the Holocaust or the dangers of Islamic anti-Semitism
  • The Museum does not display documents, photographs or information regarding the alliance between Hitler and the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem and the Mufti’s role in the extermination of Jewish populations.
  • The Museum does not 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 a taboo on conducting a program, lecture or even sponsored research on Arab involvement in the Holocaust and in the current rise of Holocaust denial and anti-Semitism in America and worldwide.

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 on June 1, 2006 the 65th anniversary of the Farhud massacre.

Mr. Fred Zeidman, chairman of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, has been invited to address these concerns.

Carol Greenwald / Rabbi Shmuel Herzfeld

Holocaust Museum Watch / AMCHA, vice-president

202-812-8900

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