Winnipeg Fights Back Against Anti-Semitic ‘$Hitler’s List’ Vandals

Image by winnepegheights.com

By JTA March 13, 2013

Two prominent Jewish real-estate developers in central Canada are going to court to stop the distribution of anti-Semitic posters.

Image by winnepegheights.com

Posters titled “$hitlers List” began appearing on the streets of Winnipeg last year and accused a list of prominent Jews in the city of being part of a “cabal of cockroaches.” The posters primarily targeted the Jewish mayor of Winnipeg, Sam Katz, but they also name brothers Sandy and Robert Shindleman, who are now bringing suit against the man responsible.

The Shindleman brothers’ decision to file the lawsuit came following the government’s decision not to pursue hate-speech charges against the man responsible for the posters, the National Post reported Monday.

“We’ve never backed down from a bully, or let a bully succeed in bullying people that we know. We’ll stand up for ourselves, we’ll stand up for others,” Sandy Shindleman, CEO of Shindico, the real-estate company where his brother Robert is also an executive, told the Post.

Failed Winnipeg city council candidate Gordon Warren admitted to making the posters in January, according to the Post report. The provincial attorney general’s office in Manitoba declined to bring charges against Warren because the posters did not explicitly promote genocide, a B’nai Brith Canada attorney told the Post.

The Shindleman brother’s suit against Warren primarily accuses him of libel, but it also claims the brothers were the victims of hate-speech. If the hate-speech claim is proven, the court could issue an injunction stopping Warren from saying anything more about the brothers.

While a B’nai Brith Canada report released in 2012 showed anti-Semitic incidents decreasing across Canada, Manitoba was one of two areas where such incidents increased. Last year saw 78 anti-Semitic incidents in the province, eighteen more than in 2010.

The Forward is free to read, but it isn’t free to produce

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward.

Now more than ever, American Jews need independent news they can trust, with reporting driven by truth, not ideology. We serve you, not any ideological agenda.

At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.

Readers like you make it all possible. We’re near the end of our Passover Fundraising Drive, and we have a very ambitious goal of $127,000 by April 21.

This is a great time to support independent Jewish journalism you rely on. Make a Passover gift today!

— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO