Swedish deputy PM steps down after calling 9/11 attacks ‘accidents’
Sweden’s deputy prime minister, who called the 9/11 attacks “accidents” and earlier described the migrant crisis in Europe as “the new Auschwitz,” is leaving the government.
Asa Romson said May 9 she would step down after her Green Party made moves to replace her, reported Local.se, an English-language website for Swedish news.
On April 18, Romson made the “accidents” remark in an interview with broadcaster SVT. The 2001 al-Qaida attacks in New York and Washington killed more than 3,000 people.
She pulled back on her comments the next day.
“Obviously, the attack on New York on Sept. 11, 2001, was one of the biggest attacks and acts of terror and atrocities against the peaceful and democratic world that we have seen in modern times. I don’t dispute that,” Romson told Aftonbladet. “The accident is that we got a very harsh debate on integration and on societal development with different religions side by side and subsequent discrimination.”
Last year, Romson apologized for comparing the deaths of migrants from the Middle East en route to Europe to the industrialized extermination of Jews at the Nazi death camp Auschwitz in southern Poland.
“We are in Europe turning the Mediterranean into the new Auschwitz,” she said during a televised debate.
Romson also walked back that comment, which she described as “ill-conceived,” after politicians and Jewish community leaders accused her of abusing the memory of Holocaust victims. — jta
France gives Nazi-looted Degas to heirs
France has returned a drawing by Edgar Degas to the heirs of the Nazi-looted piece.
The late 19th-century charcoal sketch of three ballerinas, called “Trois danseuses en buste,” was handed over in a May 9 ceremony in Paris.
Viviane Dreyfus accepted the drawing on behalf of her father, Maurice. Dreyfus said she had not known the drawing existed, the Associated Press reported.
The Nazis stole the drawing from Maurice Dreyfus in 1940. It was found in 1951 in the building that housed the Occupation-era German Embassy, and remained in a drawer in the Louvre museum in Paris listed as MNR, for “musées nationaux récupération” — or national museums recovery — and placed under the legal responsibility of the French Foreign Ministry.
The French Culture Ministry tracked down the Dreyfus family by working with French genealogists in a renewed effort to return the estimated 2,000 unclaimed works currently in French museums, of which at least 145 were stolen by the Nazis.
Maurice Dreyfus died in 1957. Other works he owned were returned to him after World War II, according to The Telegraph. — jta
Canada bars entry to anti-Semitic comic
Border agents in Montreal sent convicted anti-Semitic comedian Dieudonne M’bala M’bala back to France on May 10 after he landed in the city for 10 soldout shows in Canada.
Hours earlier, Dieudonne had been convicted again in France for breaking hate speech laws and fined $11,400.
Jewish groups had pressured government officials in Ottawa for two weeks to keep Dieudonne from entering Canada, based on his numerous convictions in Europe over the last decade for hate speech and Holocaust denial. Britain also has barred the comedian from entry.
“It would seem that the [Canadian Border Services Agency] made the right decision today,” said David Ouellette of the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs. “Through his incitement to violence, glorification of terrorism and anti-Semitic vitriol, he was clearly not admissible to Canada.”
Montreal Mayor Denis Coderre said Dieudonne was not welcome.
Dieudonne, 50, was scheduled for shows in three Quebec cities, including a Montreal art gallery that was vandalized, apparently in anticipation of his appearance there. — jta
Kosher restaurant in England set afire in suspected arson
Police in Manchester, England, who are investigating a suspected arson at a kosher restaurant say they have found no evidence the incident was racially motivated.
Security camera footage shows the Ta’am Restaurant in Bury, 11 miles north of Manchester, being doused with a liquid by two unidentified men before bursting into flames on May 6, the Manchester Evening News reported. No one was hurt.
The owners, however, said they believe the attack on the restaurant, which recently moved to Bury, could have been motivated by their Jewish heritage.
Martine Vaizman, who has co-owned the business with her husband, Amos, for four years, told the Jewish Chronicle of London that seeing the footage “was the most horrendous feeling — knowing that someone didn’t just wish us ill, but also followed through. I can’t understand who would be capable of doing such a thing.”
Vaizman, who wsa born in Israel, said she and her husband were not at the restaurant at the time of the fire because it was Shabbat. — jta