"2007 Fair Opens as Homage to Catalonia in the Language of Holocaust Denial"
In a letter to Frankfurt Book Fair Director, Jürgen Boos, the Simon Wiesenthal Centre’s Director for International Relations, Dr Shimon Samuels, recalled their meetings "to seek cooperation in keeping hate out of the Frankfurt Book Fair," noting that "these discussions followed the
2004 Fair which honoured the Arab League. The speaker featured at the opening was the notorious Holocaust denier, Mohammad Salmawy."Samuels continued, "Little did we imagine that the 2007 Fair, which opened last night in homage to Catalonia, would be similarly tainted."
"What makes this photo (3.25 ft x 5 ft in dimension) an unmitigated outrage is the substance of its caption: ‘The Wall in the Palestinian West Bank. The picture is a mosaic of images from a Google search. Ten thousand photos from the Internet searched for Nazi concentration camps (Search key words include ‘labor camp’, ‘Auschwitz-Birkenau’, ‘Belzec’, ‘Bergen-Belsen’).’ These apparently compose the pixels that comprise Fontcuberta’s photo – a smug exercise in banalizing the horrors of the Holocaust, an offense to the memory of its victims and to the pain of its survivors, Jews and others – including Catalan fugitives from Franco’s Fascism."
"Above all, Mr Director, the Frankfurt Book Fair – through this catalogue under its official auspices – is directly implicated in the violation of German law and of Germany’s commitments to European Union and Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) provisions against Holocaust denial."
The Centre insisted that "the offensive Catalogue be immediately withdrawn, a public apology be issued and appropriate measures be taken against those responsible. Needless to say, we expect the photo ‘El Mur’ to be removed from the FFI exhibition, and replaced by a photo more representative of Catalan art and culture."
El asunto “Fontcuberta”: carta del Centro Simon Wiesenthal a la Feria del Libro de Frankfurt
