BUCHAREST (AFP) – The Simon Wiesenthal Center, a Jewish human rights organization, on Friday criticized Israeli President Shimon Peres who paid tribute to Romania for "rescuing 400,000 Jews" during World War II.

The Jerusalem-based center voiced its "surprise and strong disappointment" at Peres who failed to mention "the central role played by the regime of Romanian dictator Marshal Ion Antonescu in the mass murder of an estimated 280,000 to 380,000 Romanian and Ukrainian Jews during the Holocaust."

During a press conference with Romanian counterpart Traian Basescu Thursday, the visiting Israeli president said: "We shall never forget that in the darkest days in Europe under the Nazis Romania stood up and saved the life of many of the Jewish people here and that 400,000 of them went to Israel and they were the builders of Israel."

The center said in a statement that Peres "sought to emphasize a positive element of the history of Romanian Jewry ..."

But "his failure to condemn the horrific crimes of the Antonescu regime against the Jewish people is likely to have very dire consequences, especially in Romania and elsewhere in Eastern Europe, where there is a growing tendency ... to deny or minimize the highly-significant role played by local Nazi collaborators in the annihilation of the Jews.".

The group called on Peres to "correct and fully clarify his unfortunate remarks."

Romania had long denied its participation in the Holocaust, triggering criticism from Israel and Jewish organizations.

An international commission of historians set up in 2003 established that some 270.000 Romanian and Ukrainian Jews died between 1940 and 1944, during marshal Ion Antonescu's pro-Nazi regime, while some 25,000 Gypsies were deported, half of whom died.

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