The Jerusalem Post reports:
A Romanian watchdog group on anti-Semitism said it was worried by the mayoral candidacy of a Bucharest politician who said local Jews lied for money about the number of their brethren killed in the Holocaust.read more
Marian Munteanu of the National Liberal Party, Romania’s second largest, made the accusation in a press statement he co-signed in 1994, when he was part of the Christian-nationalist Movement for Romania organization.
Jewish groups put the number of Romanians killed in the Holocaust at 420,000 to “obtain illicit moneys from Romanian people through disinformation and manipulation of public opinion, with the complicity of treacherous elements who infiltrated the Romanian institutional structures,” the statement read, the online edition of Evenimentul Zilei reported on Thursday.
The Elie Wiesel National Institute for the Study of Holocaust warned that Munteanu “presents a concern” not only because of his nationalist rhetoric and “statements minimizing or denying” the Holocaust, but also for “misrepresenting” reality today, according to the Agerpres news website. The institute cited an April 13 statement by Munteanu, who, in criticizing legislation from last year which proscribes anti-Semitic speech and Holocaust denial, said the law itself was anti-Semitic because it singles out Jews.
In Romania, he said, “there is hardly anti-Semitism, rather xenophobia. We are all philo-Semites because we are Christians.”
Read also: Bucharest mayoral candidate outed as Holocaust denier
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