Abraham H. Foxman, ADL National Director, issued the following statement:
The shooting at the United States Holocaust Museum, in which a security guard was critically wounded, is a very sad and tragic event which reminds us, as the Museum itself does every day, in the starkest way, where the spread of hatred can lead.
The shooter, James Von Brunn (also known as James Wennecke Brunn), is a longtime white supremacist and anti-Semite. He has published an anti-Semitic book, "Kill the Best Gentiles." He has created an anti-Semitic Web site, which he called "The Holy Western Empire." He was arrested and imprisoned in 1981 for using a sawed-off shotgun to try to take Federal Reserve Board members hostage on the grounds that Jews control the nation's banking system.
Brunn's evil attack, at the very place that was created to remember and teach about evil in the world, is an immediate reminder that words of hate matter, that we can never afford to ignore hate because words of hate can easily become acts of hate, no matter the place, no matter the age of the hatemonger.
We express our support to the family of the victim of the attack. We recommit ourselves to expose and counter hatred in our society so that horrible events such as the shooting at the Holocaust Museum will no longer be a part of the fabric of our democracy.
A backgrounder on James Von Brunn is available on the League's Web site at http://www.adl.org/main_Extremism/Von_Brunn.htm.
