SWC: On 70th Anniversary of End of WWII, Roger Waters Bestows Moral Equivalence on Nazi and Allied Soldiers

June 23, 2015

              

  

The Simon Wiesenthal Center, a leading Jewish human rights NGO dedicated to teaching the lessons of the Nazi Holocaust, denounced a statement by musician Roger Waters for bestowing moral equivalency on the Allied soldiers who fought so valiantly to defeat Nazi Germany and the Nazis who, in the name of Hitler’s Third Reich brought mass murder, destruction, mayhem, and genocide to tens of millions of innocent people during World War II.

  

In a June 22 press release promoting his upcoming film ‘Roger Waters The Wall,’ he is quoted saying, “I hope these worldwide screenings this coming September 29 will be a good opportunity to remember, not just our fallen loved ones, but all the other guys’ fallen loved ones. Ashes and diamonds foe and friend we were all equal in the end.”

 

“Waters comments desecrate the memory of all those who perished at the hands of the Nazis and all those who fought so valiantly to defeat Hitler. One army came to destroy Western Civilization and its values; the other came to save humankind. The struggle to vanquish Nazi Germany was a desperate and just war to defeat the genocidal and racist regime of Adolph Hitler and his war against the Jewish people,” charged Rabbi Marvin Hier and Abraham Cooper, Dean and Founder and Associate Dean of the Wiesenthal Center. “Had the Allies lost, not a single Jew would have survived in Europe and tens of millions of non-Aryans would have been slaves to the Third Reich.”

 

“The 70^th anniversary of the end of World War II is the appropriate time to teach millions of young people about the evils of Nazism and the price the world paid by failing to oppose the Nazis before they launched the Second World War. What at a shame that this entertainer chooses to use status to equate perpetrators, heroes and victims,” Center officials concluded.

 

For more information, please contact the Center's Public Relations Department, 310-553-9036, join the Center on Facebook, www.facebook.com/simonwiesenthalcenter, or follow @simonwiesenthal for news updates sent direct to your Twitter feed.

 

The Simon Wiesenthal Center is one of the largest international Jewish human rights organizations with over 400,000 member families in the United States. It is an NGO at international agencies including the United Nations, UNESCO, the OSCE, the OAS, the Council of Europe and the Latin American Parliament (Parlatino).