Jerusalem – The Simon Wiesenthal Center today denounced a Russian international conference convened by the Rodina party (the Russian National Patriotic Union) to establish a pan-European movement to lobby for Russia’s interests with the participation of West European neo-Nazis and fascists. In a statement issued here by its director of Eastern European Affairs, Dr. Efraim Zuroff, the Center harshly criticized the participation of German Udo Voigt of the extreme right National Democratic Party in addition to representatives of Greek Golden Dawn and the founder of the Italian Fascist movement Roberto Fiore, as well as representatives from extreme right-wing parties in Great Britain, Austria, Sweden, Belgium, Denmark and Spain.
According to Zuroff:
“How can Russia, which prides itself on its staunch anti-fascist tradition and its significant role in the defeat in World War II of Nazi Germany, permit such a conference to take place with the participation of some of the worst of Hitler’s heirs? Such behavior is the antithesis of the traditional Russian opposition to Nazism and fascism and is an insult to the memory of the Red Army soldiers who sacrificed their lives to defeat the Third Reich.”
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