Amazing Discoveries reports on antisemitism allegations made against Walter Veith, an ordained evangelist in South Africa who is one of its main speakers.
"It is probable that the people who lodged the complaint are the group from EANN (the German equivalent of SPECTRUM MAGAZINE) because they propagated such action immediately after the lecture," Veith said in a letter dated Nov. 28, 2012, to the Transvaal Conference. While EANN was originally involved in a complaint against Veith to the German Union, it has declined responsibility for the inquiry "lodged at the public prosecutor’s office in Nuremberg to investigate whether Walter Veith in the said presentation had commited [sic] sedition," according to Amazing Discoveries. It is still unknown who made the inquiry.
Below is the beginning of Amazing Discoveries' full report regarding Veith's situation, along with correspondence between Veith and church leaders:
On October 20, 2012, Walter Veith preached the lecture “King of the North (Part 2)” from the new series Repairing the Breach in German [German title Sturm aus dem Norden] in Marienberg SDA Church in Nurnberg, Germany, to an audience of approximately 350 people. The lecture was also live-streamed to approximately 1500 people. Almost immediately after the presentation, Walter Veith received violent opposition by way of an article by EANN about his claims of Freemason/Jesuit involvement in the creation of the State in Israel after WWII and the way he expressed himself in regards to the Jews during Hitler’s regime. Although EANN is run by a few Adventist individuals, it is not an official institution of the SDA church in Germany but a privately funded online news magazine that designates itself as an “Independent Journal for Religion, Church and Society”. Three points specifically were brought up as points of contention:
- The usage of the words “little yellow cloth” [German “gelbes Tüchlein”] in reference to the markings the Jewish people had to wear during the post Napoleonic era and during Hitler’s regime.
- The usage of the word “herded” when referring to the situation of the Jews after the end of the war as a result of Hitler’s persecution and their transference to the newly formed State of Israel, as well as the lack of compassion on the part of many countries, including Canada, the UK, and others who refused entrance to Jews that had escaped the Nazi totalitarian regime.
- The use of quotes from the book Facts are Facts by the Jewish author Benjamin Freedman, as evidence that most Jews aren’t really of Jewish descent, because Freedman is considered an anti-Semitic.
The writer of the EANN article felt these comments were derogatory towards the Jews and as a result raised severe opposition towards Walter Veith, accusing him of anti-Semitism and a “relativization of the holocaust” because Walter connected it to secret plans to create a modern Jewish State in Palestine.
When the SDA leadership of the two German unions was confronted with these allegations, including a personal letter of the EANN author to the two union presidents, it attempted to make contact with Veith without success. Since they felt that the situation was potentially explosive in nature the German Union (including the SDA administrators of Austria and Switzerland) decided to take immediate action by publishing a statement which condemned in very strong terms Veith’s usage of “herding” and “little yellow cloth”, his manner of dealing with other religions as well as his supposed “conspiracy theories” about the involvement of secret societies in history and in general. They requested that local churches not provide a platform for “events like this”. The statement was to be circulated via email to all pastors and elders, via Adventist press agencies, and printed in the monthly church organ “Adventisten Heute”. Furthermore, the document was styled as a reiteration of an official 2005 statement of the German speaking SDA church where it confessed its shortcomings during the time of the Nazi regime thus lending momentous significance to the statement against Walter Veith.
As soon as Walter returned to South Africa, he wrote the following letter to the German brethren explaining that he did not mean anything derogatory in his remarks, and that the expression “little yellow cloth” was due to German being his second language. (Read full report)