The Bali Holocaust Conference was held on June 12, 2007 in Jimbaran, Bali, Indonesia. The conference aimed to promote religious tolerance and affirm the reality of the Holocaust and was attended by rabbis, Holocaust witnesses, and Muslim leaders, teachers and students. This event was convened by former Indonesian president Abdurrahman Wahid, and was sponsored by the Wahid Institute, the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles, and the Libforall Foundation. Wahid stated that although he is a good friend of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, his views about the Holocaust are wrong and that it really happened.
Among the attendants were Abraham Cooper, a rabbi and the associate dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center; C. Holland Taylor, the chief executive officer of the Libforall Foundation; American Holocaust survivor Sol Teichman; Indonesian Catholic priest Franz Magnis-Suseno; Indian religious leader Sri Sri Ravi Shankar; Tumini, a Balinese woman who was severely burned when al-Qaeda-linked militants targeted two nightclubs in 2002; Rabbi Daniel Landes, director of the Pardes Institute of Jewish Studies in Jerusalem; Alfred Balitzer, Ph.D., Senior Fellow at Claremont Graduate University in the United States and a senior consultant to the Simon Wiesenthal Center; and Ted Gover, of Pacific Research & Strategies, Inc., conference and media coordinator.
Abdurrahman Wahid, though more colloquially known as Gus Dur, was an Indonesian politician and Islamic religious leader who served as the fourth president of Indonesia, from his election in 1999 until he was removed from office in 2001. A long time leader within the Nahdlatul Ulama organization, he was the founder of the National Awakening Party (PKB). He was the son of Minister of Religious Affairs Wahid Hasyim, and the grandson of Nahdatul Ulama founder Hasyim Asy'ari. Due to a visual impairment caused by glaucoma, he was blind in the left eye and partially blind in his right eye. He was the first president of Indonesia to have had physical disabilities.
The Simon Wiesenthal Center (SWC) is a Jewish human rights organization established in 1977 by Rabbi Marvin Hier. The center is known for Holocaust research and remembrance, hunting Nazi war criminals, combating anti-Semitism, tolerance education, defending Israel, and its Museum of Tolerance.
Marvin Hier is the dean and founder of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, its Museum of Tolerance and of Moriah, the center's film division. He has been a Track II diplomacy contributor to the genesis of the Abraham Accords.
The International Conference to Review the Global Vision of the Holocaust was a two-day conference in Tehran, Iran that opened on December 11, 2006. Iranian foreign minister Manouchehr Mottaki said the conference sought "neither to deny nor prove the Holocaust... [but] to provide an appropriate scientific atmosphere for scholars to offer their opinions in freedom about a historical issue". Participants included David Duke, Moshe Aryeh Friedman, Robert Faurisson, Fredrick Töben, Richard Krege, Michèle Renouf, Ahmed Rami and Yisroel Dovid Weiss of Neturei Karta.
The Council for Advancement and Support of Education (CASE) is a nonprofit association of educational institutions. It serves professionals in the field of educational advancement. This field encompasses alumni relations, communications, marketing and development (fundraising) for educational institutions such as universities and independent or private schools.
Gisi Fleischmann was a Zionist activist and the leader of the Bratislava Working Group, one of the best known Jewish rescue groups during the Holocaust. Fleischmann was arrested on 15 October 1944 and was murdered in the Auschwitz concentration camp three days later.
The Bali Aga, Baliaga, or Bali Mula are the indigenous people of Bali. Linguistically they are an Austronesian people. Bali Aga people are predominantly located in the eastern part of the island, in Bangli, Buleleng and Karangasem, but they can also be found in north-western and central regions. Bali Aga people who are referred to as Bali Pergunungan are those that are located at Trunyan village. For the Trunyan Bali Aga people, the term Bali Aga is regarded as an insult with an additional meaning of "the mountain people that are fools"; therefore, they prefer the term Bali Mula instead.
Project Aladdin is a multi-faceted cultural initiative launched in March 2009 under the patronage of UNESCO with the aim of countering Holocaust denial and all forms of racism and intolerance, while promoting intercultural dialogue, particularly among Muslims and Jews. The project was initiated by the Fondation pour la Mémoire de la Shoah, a French foundation dedicated to keeping alive the memory of the Holocaust.
Dovid Katz is an American-born Vilnius-based scholar, author, and educator specializing in Yiddish language and literature, Lithuanian-Jewish culture, and the Holocaust in Eastern Europe. In recent years, he has been known for combating the so-called "Double Genocide" revision of Holocaust history which asserts a moral equivalence between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. He is editor of the web journal Defending History which he founded in 2009. He is known to spend part of each year at his home in North Wales. His website includes a list of his books, of some articles by topic, a record of recent work, and a more comprehensive bibliography.
Konrad Kwiet is a historian and scholar of the Holocaust. He is currently Pratt Foundation Professor at the University of Sydney and Resident Historian at the Sydney Jewish Museum. He has worked in universities, museums and research centres around the world, including Heidelberg, Israel, Washington DC, Oxford and Berlin.
Jamaah Ansharut Tauhid or Jemaah Anshorut Tauhid is a splinter cell of the Jemaah Islamiyah (JI) designated as a terrorist organization by the United Nations and the United States. The latter is most known for perpetrating the 2002 Bali bombings along with Azahari Husin and Noordin Mohammad Top, both Malaysian terrorist kingpin.
The John Paul II Center for Interreligious Dialogue is an academic center that serves to build bridges between religious traditions, particularly between Catholic Christian and Jewish pastoral and academic leaders. The Center is a partnership between the Russell Berrie Foundation and the Pontifical University of Saint Thomas Aquinas (Angelicum). It operates as part of the Section for Ecumenism and Dialogue in the Theology Faculty of the Angelicum in Rome.
Yosef Mizrachi is a Haredi rabbi and public speaker. Considered by many to be a leading Orthodox Jewish outreach rabbi, Mizrachi's outspokenness on certain issues has led to his widespread denunciation and characterization as misguided by leading Orthodox Jewish authorities.
Daniel S. Brenner is an American rabbi. Brenner is chief of Education and Program at Moving Traditions. Brenner was the founding executive director of Birthright Israel NEXT and he directed graduate-level training programs at Auburn Theological Seminary and at CLAL- the National Jewish Center for Learning and Leadership, both in New York City. In 2009, he was named by Newsweek Magazine as one of the fifty most influential rabbis in America.
Ru Freeman is a Sri Lankan born writer and activist whose creative and political work has appeared internationally, including in the UK Guardian, The Boston Globe, and the New York Times. She is the author of the novels A Disobedient Girl, and On Sal Mal Lane, a NYT Editor’s Choice Book. Both novels have been translated into multiple languages including Italian, French, Turkish, Dutch, and Chinese. She is editor of the anthology, Extraordinary Rendition: (American) Writers on Palestine, a collection of the voices of 65 American poets and writers speaking about America’s dis/engagement with Palestine, and co-editor of the anthology, Indivisible: Global Leaders on Shared Security. She holds a graduate degree in labor studies, researching female migrant labor in the countries of Kuwait, the U.A.E, and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, and has worked at the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington, DC, in the South Asia office of the American Federation of Labor-Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL/CIO), and the American Friends Service Committee in their humanitarian and disaster relief programs. She is a contributing editorial board member of the Asian American Literary Review, and a fellow of the Bread Loaf Writer’s Conference, Yaddo, Hedgebrook, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts and the Lannan Foundation. She is the 2014 winner of the Janet Heidinger Kafka Prize for Fiction by an American Woman. She writes for the Huffington Post on books and politics.
The Wahid Institute is a Research Center on Islam, based in Jakarta, Indonesia. It was founded in 2004 by the former President of Indonesia, Abdurrahman Wahid and is led by his daughter Yenny Zannuba Wahid.
Lance Jonathan Sussman is a historian of American Jewish History, college professor, Chair of the Board of Governors of Gratz College, Melrose Park, PA and until summer 2022 the senior rabbi, now emeritus, at Reform Congregation Keneseth Israel (KI) located in Elkins Park, PA. He is the author of books and articles including: Isaac Leeser and the Making of American Judaism (1995) and Sharing Sacred Moments (1999), and a co-editor of Reform Judaism in America: A Biographical Dictionary and Sourcebook (1993) and New Essays in American Jewish History (2009). Since 2010 he has also published articles on Judaism and art.
Anand Krishna is an Indonesian spiritual humanist of ethnic Indian origin and Sindhi descent, who lives in Ubud, Bali. A prolific author and promoter of inter-faith harmony, he was accused of blasphemy by militant Muslim groups after he criticized Islamic conservatives seeking to transform Indonesia into an Islamic state.
The Yeshiva University High School of Los Angeles is a college-preparatory, Modern Orthodox Jewish high school founded in 1979 by Rabbi Marvin Hier. It has no affiliation with Yeshiva University in New York City.
Abraham Cooper is an American rabbi. He is the associate dean and director of Global Social Action Agenda for the Simon Wiesenthal Center, a Jewish human rights organization. He is currently the chairman of the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom.
