Vanunu was returned to prison for violating the terms of his parole, Maguire urged Jews in Israel to petition their government for Vanunu's release and freedom. She praised Vanunu as "a man of peace", "a great visionary", "a true Gandhian spirit" and compared his actions to those of Alfred Nobel. References to the Holocaust At a joint press conference with Mordechai Vanunu in Jerusalem in December 2004, Maguire compared Israel's nuclear weapons to the Nazi gas chambers in Auschwitz. "When I think about nuclear weapons, I've been to Auschwitz concentration camp". She added, "Nuclear weapons are only gas chambers perfected ... and for a people who already know what gas chambers are, how can you even think of building perfect gas chambers". In January 2006, close to Holocaust Memorial Day, Maguire asked that Mordechai Vanunu be remembered together with the Jews that perished in the Holocaust. "As we, with sorrow and sadness, remember the Holocaust Victims, we remember too those individuals of conscience who refused to be silenced in the face of danger and paid with their freedom and lives in defending their Jewish brothers and sisters, and we remember our brother Mordechai Vanunu – the lonely Israeli prisoner in his own country, who refused to be silent". In a speech delivered in February 2006 to the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation in Santa Barbara, California, Maguire again made a comparison between nuclear weapons and the Nazis. "Last April some of us protested at Dimona Nuclear Plant, in Israel, calling for it to be open to UN Inspection, and bombs to be destroyed. Israeli Jets flew overhead, and a train passed into the Dimona nuclear site. This brought back to me vivid memories of my visit to Auschwitz concentration camp, with its rail tracks, trains, destruction and death". Maguire firmly denied comparing Israel to Nazi Germany in an interview with Tal Schneider of Lady Globes in November 2010. "I have for years been speaking out against nuclear weapons. I am actively opposed to nuclear weapons in Britain, in the United States, in Israel, in any country, because nuclear weapons are the ultimate destruction of humankind. But I have never said that Israel is like Nazi Germany, and I don't know why I am quoted like that in Israel. I also never compared Gaza to an extermination camp. I visited the death camps in Austria, with Nobel Prize laureate Elie Wiesel, and