January 02, 2013 Q. What is the basis for ADL's concerns about Mel Gibson's "The Passion of the Christ"?A. We first learned about Mr. Gibson's plans to make a film based on the final hours of Jesus' life in a New York Times Magazine article that appeared in February 2003. An early version of the script was shared with us. In August 2003, an ADL representative saw a rough cut in Houston. On January 21, we saw a version of the film at a screening in Orlando, Florida. We had hoped to see the film…

December 30, 2012 Remarks By Abraham H. Foxman National Director Anti-Defamation League ADL National Commission Meeting New York, NY, November 1, 2007You have just heard a very important presentation by John Marttila on our 2007 Survey of American Attitudes Toward Jews. But it is just the tip of the iceberg. The survey yielded much information and we will be releasing additional data in the weeks to come. But now let's ask broader questions about anti-Semitism: Why is it so enduring and lethal…

by: Simon Reich | January 01, 2000 Dimensions Vol. 13, No. 2. To what extent -- if any -- and in what ways, did Ford in Germany cooperate with the Nazi regime? And, if it did, what motivated such cooperation: racist ideology, or a concern for corporate profitability? In 1990 I published a book entitled The Fruits of Fascism (Cornell University Press), in which I attempted to offer a compelling and novel thesis. I argued that the different degrees of success enjoyed by the Ford Motor Company's…

Fifty Years of Forgetting and Remembering by: S. Jonathan Wiesen | January 01, 2000 Dimensions, Vol. 13, No. 2. The great majority of German businessmen behaved in a decidedly unheroic manner during the Nazi era. Most of them, especially leaders of larger companies, not only refrained from risking their lives to save Jews, but actually profited from the use of forced and slave labor, the "Aryanization" of Jewish property, and the plundering of companies in Nazi-occupied Europe. Six years ago,…

August 30, 2011 Ten years after  9/11, antisemitic conspiracy theories surrounding the attacks are "alive and well" and fueled by an entrenched propaganda industry, according to the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), which today issued a new report showing how these theories have grown and evolved over the last decade. In "Decade of Deceit: Antisemitic 9/11 Conspiracy Theories 10 Years Later," ADL looks at the individuals who continue to circulate distorted conspiracy theories about 9/11,…

Compliance and Confrontation by: Victoria J. Barnett | January 01, 1998 Dimensions, Vol 12, No 2 Churches throughout Europe were mostly silent while Jews were persecuted, deported and murdered by the Nazis.  Churches, especially those  in Nazi Germany, sought to act, as institutions tend to do, in their own best interests -- narrowly defined, short-sighted interests. The list of "bystanders" -- those who declined to challenge the Third Reich in any way -- that emerges from any study…

by: Jonathan Petropoulos | January 01, 1997 Dimensions, Vol 11, No 1 It is time for Switzerland, Sweden, Portugal and Spain to acknowledge that there were no truly neutral countries on the European continent during World War II. It is now time for those four nations to acknowledge that they were part of the Nazis' New Order and that they bear some responsibility for the tragic history of the Thirties and Forties. Neutrality, when practiced by nations, is not always neutral. It does not…

by: Abraham H. Foxman | July 11, 2007 Jewish Telegraphic Agency NEW YORK (JTA) – With anti-Semitism resurgent in the world, one of the encouraging elements for the Jewish people, particularly if one is to compare things today to the 1930s and 1940s, is the remarkable change in the Catholic Church's attitudes toward Jews. In the past four decades, a conceptual revolution has taken place in the church's relationship with the Jewish people. The first step came with Vatican II and its…