Anti-Semitism on the rise in US and Europe, Franklin Graham warns
Franklin Graham warned that anti-Semitism is once again on the rise, this time in the US as well as in Europe.
Graham, the son of Billy Graham and the current head of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association (BGEA), made the comments while endorsing the new film "Return to the Hiding Place" by Peter Spencer, which saw limited release on Friday.
Billy Graham is a popular American preacher affectionately known as "America's pastor," and had produced the original film "The Hiding Place" to which the new film is a sequel.
"It is a great piece, well-produced and powerful," Graham said of the film in an article on the Christian Post.
"This release is very timely and has modern-day application as anti-Semitism is rearing its head again in many parts of Europe and the United States," the BGEA president said.
The Hiding Place was released in 1975, and was a film adaptation of the book by Corrie ten Boom. The book and the film tells the story of ten Boom and her family as they struggled to survive in a Nazi concentration camp in World War II.
The new film will tell the story of untrained teenagers who eventually became soldiers in an underground resistance effort against the rising Nazi empire and their "Death-Skull Storm Troopers." It also tells the story of Hans Poley, a young physics student who refused to join the Nazi party and was forced to hide with Corrie ten Boom where he witnessed the Nazi atrocities against the Jews.
Return to the Hiding Place was screened in last year's Sundance and amassed over 19 festivals awards.
Other groups have also warned against the rising of anti-Semitism.
"Once again young Jewish boys are afraid to wear yarmulkes [skullcaps] on the streets of Paris, Budapest, London and even Berlin," Ronald S. Lauder, president of the World Jewish Congress said during the commemoration of the 70th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz in January.
Auschwitz was one of the worst concentration camps in Nazi Germany, with roughly 1.5 million people perishing in the there before its liberation by the Soviet Army in 1945.
