The Simon Wiesenthal Center wrote an open letter to Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos calling for the platform to remove Nazi propaganda films that are currently available.
Thirty classic Nazi propaganda films – from The Eternal Jew to the Riefenstahl Collection – available for sale or streaming on the Amazon Prime video network, were found by an advocacy group called Americans Against Antisemitism.
“These films should be viewed – if at all – in a history class, where educators can expose the lies of Nazi Germany, its violent racist ideology, and its genocidal hatred of the Jewish people,” Rabbi Abraham Cooper, associate dean and Global Social Action director at the Wiesenthal Center, wrote on Wednesday. “These films helped create and sustain Jew-hatred, which directly led to the ‘Final Solution of the Jewish Question’ and the mass murder of 6 million innocent Jews during WWII.”
Leni Riefenstahl’s films were instrumental in spreading the propaganda that contributed to the Nazi rise to power. The Eternal Jew (Der ewige Jude), commissioned by Nazi Minister of Propaganda Joseph Goebbels, depicts Jews as a group that wanders from land to land and likens them to rats.
“In just a few days, January 20 will mark 80 years to the day that 15 German government ministers of state, among them eight PhDs and sons of clergy, voted unanimously to murder every Jew within reach of the Nazi Third Reich.
“In addition, January 27 will mark International Holocaust Remembrance Day, with formal ceremonies at the United Nations and Auschwitz,” Cooper wrote, urging Bezos to “utilize these two important dates this month to announce that these hate propaganda Nazi films, used to help pave the way to the Shoah, will no longer be marketed by Amazon.
“You better than most understood and understand the power of the Internet. Please do what’s right. Please do your share to combat antisemitism and bigotry.”