Lassana Bathily, the Malian-born Muslim shop assistant who hid Jewish shoppers at a kosher market in Paris in the midst of a hostage crisis, will be among the recipients of the Simon Wiesenthal Center’s Medal of Valor at its annual National Tribute Dinner tonight at The Beverly Hilton.
The other living recipient of the Medal of Valor will be Kevin Vickers, Canada’s ambassador to Ireland, who as sergeant at arms of Canada’s House of Commons shot and killed a gunman who had killed a guard at the Canadian National War Memorial.
The posthumous recipients are Zidan Seif, a police officer from Israel’s Druze minority who was killed trying to protect a West Jerusalem synagogue from two Palestinian terrorists, and German industrialist Eduard Schulte, who risked his life to cross the border into Switzerland to warn the West of the Nazi regime’s plans for the Holocaust.
Filmmaker Harvey Weinstein, a co-chairman of The Weinstein Co., will receive the center’s highest honor, the Humanitarian Award, for his support of the center and its Museum of Tolerance.
DreamWorks Animation CEO Jeffrey Katzenberg will be the dinner’s master of ceremonies.
The Simon Wiesenthal Center is an international Jewish human rights organization that combats hate and anti-Semitism around the world.
— City News Service