JERUSALEM - Officials expressed outrage over the weekend that the City of Barcelona would publish a teachers’ training manual comparing “the wall of shame Israel is building in Palestine” to concentration camps.
The manual was published last week and serves as a guide for high school teachers talking about the Holocaust. The specific comparison is found in the chapter dealing the imprisonment of Spanish Republicans.
“The concentration camps can be compared to two other historical events: The wall of shame Israel is building in Palestine and the (American) detention camp in Guantanamo,” the manual goes.
According to Israeli diplomatic officials in Spain, the murder of six million Jews is only mentioned in passing.
Israeli reaction
Ambassador Victor Harel wrote a scathing letter to Barcelona Mayor Joan Clos demanding that these distortions be cleaned up and that current copies of the manual be removed from the shelves.
“We’re talking about statements that border on the anti-Semitic and that completely distort the very term ‘training manual’,” Israeli embassy spokesman Jackie Eldan said.
In the coming days, the president of Catalonia, the region of Spain whose capital is Barcelona, is visiting Israel. Pasqual Maragall will meet with President Moshe Katsav, who expected to raise the issue.
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