The Center confronts important contemporary issues including racism, anti-Semitism, terrorism and genocide and is accredited as an NGO both at the United Nations and UNESCO. With a membership of over 400,000 families, the Center is headquartered in Los Angeles and maintains offices in New York, Toronto, Miami, Jerusalem, Paris and Buenos Aires.

Established in 1977, the Center closely interacts on an ongoing basis with a variety of public and private agencies, meeting with elected officials, the U.S and foreign governments, diplomats and heads of state. Other issues that the Center deals with include: the prosecution of Nazi war criminals; Holocaust and tolerance education; Middle East Affairs; and extremist groups, neo-Nazism, and hate on the Internet.

The Center is headed by Rabbi Marvin Hier, its Dean and Founder. Rabbi Abraham Cooper is its Associate Dean and Rabbi Meyer May its Executive Director.

International headquarters:

1399 South Roxbury Drive, Los Angeles, California 90035, UNITED STATES
Tel: 310/553-9036 or (toll-free from within the U.S.) 800/900-9036
Fax: 310/553-4521
Email: [email protected]


Simon Wiesenthal Center - Israel Office

Since its establishment in Jerusalem in 1986, the Simon Wiesenthal Center’s Israel office has made the efforts to help bring Nazi war criminals to justice the primary focus of its activities. Founded by Holocaust historian Dr. Efraim Zuroff, who also coordinates the Center’s Nazi war crimes research worldwide, the office has played an important role in tracking down and exposing escaped Nazi war criminals and in helping to facilitate their prosecution. During the past nineteen years, the office has carried out innovative research which has helped identify over 2,800 suspected Nazi war criminals, many of whom escaped to Western democracies after World War II. It also played an important role in helping to convince countries of refuge such as Canada (in 1987), Australia (in 1989), and Great Britain (in 1991) to pass special legislation to enable the prosecution of Nazi war criminals residing in those countries.

Following the dismemberment of the Soviet Union and the fall of Communism, the Israel office has been particularly active in Eastern Europe, and especially in the Baltics, in helping to identify Holocaust perpetrators and convince often-reluctant governments to bring local Nazi war criminals to justice. It has also exposed the illegal rehabilitations granted in independent Lithuania and Latvia to dozens of individuals convicted by Soviet courts who had actively participated in the mass murder of Jews during the Holocaust.
During the past decade these efforts have intensified and have been expanded to include the fight for historical truth in many of the countries in which the Holocaust took place, as well as the struggle against contemporary anti-Semitism.
As an integral part of these efforts, the Israel office has coordinated and implemented the Center’s “Operation: Last Chance” project together with the “Targum Shlishi Foundation” in nine countries: Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Poland, Romania, Austria, Croatia, Hungary, and Germany.

Contact Information

Director: Dr. Efraim Zuroff
1 Mendele St., Jerusalem 92147
ISRAEL

Tel: 972-2-563-1273-5
Fax: 972-2-563-1276

Email: [email protected]