Wiesenthal Center Urges Thai Leaders to Condemn Christian School Event Glorifying Nazis

September 26, 2011

The Simon Wiesenthal Center is calling on Thailand’s Christian leaders to condemn a Nazi parade at the Sacred Heart Preparatory School in Chiang Mai led by students who participated in a Nazi parade replete with Seig Heil salutes, Nazi marches, gun-toting adults and even a young person dressed as Adolf Hitler (see visuals below). The march started on the school grounds and continued into the streets of the adjoining neighborhood.

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“Disgusted parents and outraged members of the public forwarded to us the visuals of a Nazi parade at the Sacred Heart School, the second such incident since 2007, involving the veneration of Nazism at a Thai school,” charged Rabbi Abraham Cooper associate dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, a Jewish human rights NGO. “It is difficult to calculate the hurt such a display inflicted on survivors of the Nazi Holocaust and the families of all victims of Nazism. There can be no justification for such an outrage to emanate from place of learning,” he said.

“The Nazis were responsible for the Holocaust, history's worst crime, and had they prevailed during World War II, their racist ideology would have eventually targeted all races the Nazis deemed ‘inferior’, including Asians,” Rabbi Cooper added. “From the visual evidence, it is clear that this Nazi celebration could not have taken place without the knowledge and cooperation of the school administration. The Simon Wiesenthal Center urges that those ultimately responsible for a school calling itself ‘Christian’, take immediate action against all those responsible for promoting and facilitating this disgraceful display. It is important that the pedagogical decisions at Sacred Heart be put in the hands of people who themselves know right from wrong,” Cooper added.

“If and when an administration is put in place at Sacred Heart that is committed to teaching ethics and history, our Center is prepared to provide the materials that will educate the faculty and student body about the Nazi mass murder of 6 million Jews, including 1.5 million children, gypsies and other innocent victims,” Cooper concluded.

Rabbi Cooper, a frequent visitor to Asia, added that a similar parade took place in 2007 at a school in Bangkok involving 200 students and more recently, ‘Slur’, a rock ban donned Nazi uniforms and swastikas in a music video.

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).

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