In the wake of comments made by Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America issued the following statement.

Orthodox Union President Mark (Moishe) Bane stated:

“Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas’s comments blaming Jewish ‘social behavior’ in Europe for the Holocaust are grossly inaccurate and an insidious type of anti-Semitism. Nazi Germany and its collaborators were solely responsible for the Holocaust. Abbas’s self-titled ‘history lesson’ was anything but. Rather than expose Palestinians to accurate information about the Holocaust and the anti-Semitic persecution Jews faced for centuries in Europe, Abbas distorts history to advance an agenda that lies about the Holocaust and Jews’ connection to Israel.”

Nathan J. Diament, Executive Director of the OU’s Advocacy Center added:

“The Orthodox Union calls on all leaders and citizens to denounce and reject these sentiments. The Nazis believed that Germans were “racially superior” and that the Jews, deemed “inferior,” were a threat to the so-called German racial community and had to be eliminated. All people of good will must repudiate Holocaust denial so that history’s tragedies to not occur again.”