Protesters Call For Eviction of Holocaust Revisionist
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.

Residents of the Upper West Side gathered yesterday to call for the eviction of Michael Santomauro from his apartment on West 72nd Street, from which he runs a Holocaust revisionist Web site.
About 30 people turned out to protest in front of the building where Mr. Santomauro rents an apartment. The building is on a block that is filled with Jewish stores and is next-door to a popular kosher restaurant.
The Jewish Defense Organization organized the rally. The group, which the Anti-Defamation League categorizes as extremist, said Mr. Santomauro held illegal meetings in his apartment with fellow Holocaust revisionists, including a 60-person meeting with an infamous British Holocaust denier, David Irving.
“It is illegal to have a commercial business like his Web site, where he sells neo-Nazi literature, from his residential home, and it is also illegal to hold large neo-Nazi meetings there,” Mordechai Levy, head of the JDO, said. It is on the basis of running a commercial business from his home that the JDO hopes to get Mr. Santomauro evicted.
The Brodsky Organization, which owns the building on West 72nd Street between Broadway and West End Avenue, did not answer telephone calls yesterday. Mr. Santomauro, who is also the founder of the Web site roommatefinders.com, did not return calls to his home.
“Attention needs to be brought to anyone who is spewing bigotry or anti-Semitism,” the City Council member who represents the neighborhood, Gale Brewer, said at the rally. “If it is legally possible to evict him, that might be appropriate, but what is more likely is that we could close down his Web site.
Located at reportersnotebook.com, Mr. Santomauro’s site includes links to revisionist Web sites and articles that compare Zionism with Nazism. One link is to a photo gallery that juxtaposes images of Nazi atrocities with those purportedly committed by the Israeli Defense Forces against Palestinian Arabs.
“I am shocked and hurt that our little wonderful community could permit and foster a neo-Nazi organization,” one person at the rally, Marcia Ostwind, said. Ms. Ostwind is a retired nurse and teacher who lives on West 71st Street.
“I wouldn’t mind if he was a single person who had his opinions,” Ms. Ostwind said of Mr. Santomauro, “but to hold an official meeting for a large group who proliferate hatred, that’s another story.”
Some of the demonstrators who came to yesterday’s protest nevertheless expressed scorn for the rally’s organizers, the JDO.
“I am a child of Holocaust survivors and I came here to demonstrate,” Aron Kay, who calls himself “a leftist activist,” said. “I have my differences with the JDO, except when it comes to dealing with Nazis.”