London’s Imperial War Museum has removed an offensive exhibit branding Jewish soldiers who fought the Nazis during World War Two as “terrorists.”
The Simon Wiesenthal Center lodged its own formal complaint with the Museum following widespread outrage, after it was revealed that “the photo poster opens with the words “Terrorist activities: Men of the First
during a march past”; adding, “The Jewish Brigade was formed in September 1944 and fought in Italy under the British Eighth Army”, then continuing, “Many of its members went on to join the Hagana and other illegal formations.”
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In his letter to the Museum, Simon Wiesenthal Centre Director for International Relations Dr. Shimon Samuels noted the apparent double-standard the Jewish Brigade was being subject to.
Samuels remembered with pride in the city of his birth – London – as he watched in June 2000 “the Holocaust Exhibition red-ribbon cut by H.M. Queen Elizabeth herself. The IWM had embarked on a path applauded by British and international Jewry”.
The Centre argued that “the above British Mandate travesty is redolent of the UK’s closure of the gates of Mandatory Palestine, which consigned untold fugitives of Nazism to their deaths. For British Jews, so many of whom served in H.M.’s forces, who later came to nascent Israel as volunteers to repel British-led Arab invaders bent on completing Hitler’s plan of extermination. Would you malign these loyal British Jewish military with the stigma of “terrorism”?
The letter queried, “Did your recently consecrated Memorial to Indian Muslim recruits, who served in both World Wars, mention “the terrorists” among them who went on to fight for Pakistan against the British Imperial Raj of India – the Jewel in the Crown?”
The Centre urged the Director-General to “to withdraw this offensive poster, take disciplinary measures against the apparent anti-Semite responsible and make a public apology to the Jewish community.”
“The Jewish Brigade under British command were heroes who combated Fascist terrorists in Italy. They were eye witnesses to the annihilation of their people as they joined the liberators of the camps.
To call them “terrorists” is the greatest Holocaust revisionism imaginable. This has tarnished your Museum and betrays the cause of British integrity” concluded Samuels.
