Simon Wiesenthal Center history

Its first claim to fame came in 1979 when it successfully petitioned West Germany to revoke a statute of limitations on Nazi war criminals.

One reason for the approval of the funding was that Hier in 1985 had promised to commemorate the Armenian genocide in the museum.

In 1990, it had become one of the largest Jewish organizations in America with 380,000 members.

The museum finally opened in 1993, in an 8-story building on Pico Boulevard opposite to Hier's yeshiva.

Michael Berenbaum of the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington praised Hier for not allowing the "rewriting of history to the exclusion of Armenian genocide." But to the Armenian community's dismay, the exhibits commemorating the Armenian genocide were removed in 1997.

In November 2005, the Simon Wiesenthal Center gave the name of four suspected former Nazi criminals to German authorities.

On November 19, 2008 a group of US Jewish and Muslim leaders sent a letter to the Wiesenthal Center urging it to halt the construction of the museum on the site.

As of February 2010, the Museum of Tolerance's plan for construction has been fully approved by Israeli courts and is proceeding at the compound of Mamilla Cemetery.

In April 2016, the New York City Council stopped funding the Tolerance Center following the arrest of a former board member who has been accused of raising $20 million from a city correctional officers' union through kickbacks.