Simon Wiesenthal

JERUSALEM - The director of Jerusalem-based Simon Wiesenthal Centre, Efraim Zuroff, says the Centre consistently opposes a renovation of the Kosovska Mitrovica house of WWII Nazi collaborationist Xhafer Deva.

In a statement to Tanjug, Zuroff said honours for Deva sent a horrible message to the Kosovo society and were a terrible insult to the memory of his numerous victims.

The director of the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Israel denounced Canadian troops for training neo-Nazi fighters in Ukraine, saying Ottawa has a responsibility to prevent such things from happening. "The Canadian government has not paid due attention," Zuroff told Citizen of Ottawa. However, the Canadian military has denied any obligation to screen participants in the training.

The UN Development Program, UNDP and the EU announced on Tuesday that they have halted the renovation of the former house of Kosovo Albanian politician Xhafer Deva, who was interior minister in a Nazi collaborationist regime during World War II.

The Tokyo Olympic organizing committee fired the director of the opening ceremony on July 22 because of a Holocaust joke he made during a comedy show in 1998.

One hundred and fifty-nine out of 250 MPs in the Serbian parliament voted on Monday for the establishment of a memorial centre at the Staro Sajmiste (Old Trade Fair) site to remember those killed at the Nazi concentration camp in occupied Belgrade during World War II.

The Simon Wiesenthal Centre, a prominent Jewish human-rights organisation, urged the Croatian authorities to ban books questioning established facts about crimes committed by the WWII fascist Ustasa movement.

Efraim Zuroff, director at the Simon Wiesenthal Centre, has dismissed the Croatian President's claim of trying to put a 'collective stigma' on the Croatian nation for the crimes of the Fascist Ustasa regime in World War II.

BELGRADE - Alojzije Stepinac, the man who supported the Ustasha regime, can be neither a saint nor hero, said Efraim Zuroff, director of the Center "Simon Wiesenthal", following the unveiling of the memorial to the bishop of the Catholic Church in Osijek.

Director of the Jerusalem-based Simon Wiesenthal Center Efraim Zuroff says the current situation regarding neo-fascism in Croatia is very bad.

Zuroff has repeatedly warned about the rise of neo-fascism in Croatia, and now say he is not optimistic that the situation could change, except with "a real leadership" in that country.

BELGRADE - Serbian First Deputy PM and FM Ivica Dacic and the Director of the Simon Wiesenthal Centre Efraim Zuroff on Thursday condemned attempts of revising WWII history in Croatia and across Europe.