that Holocaust conference
Iran hosts Holocaust doubters at conference by Farhad Pouladi
TEHRAN (AFP) - Iran has defied an international outcry as it held a
conference that questioned the truth of the Holocaust and was
attended by number of controversial Western “revisionist” historians.
Iran says the conference is aimed at providing a forum for historians
to air any view about the Holocaust but Western countries have
countered the event smacks of denial of the mass slaughter of six
million Jews in World War II.
Some of the most notorious Westerners who have downplayed the scale
of the Holocaust were attending the event, including French professor
Robert Faurisson and German-born Australian Fredrick Toeben.
Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki, in his opening address, styled
the conference as a scientific forum that would seek to find answers
to the questioning of the Holocaust by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
Ahmadinejad has repeatedly questioned the truth of the Holocaust, at
one point describing it as a “myth” and casting doubt on the scale of
the killings.
“The simple question of the president of Iran: ‘If the Holocaust is a
historical event why can it not be researched?’ set off a a wave of
accusations against Iran without trying to find a logical answer,”
said Mottaki on Monday.
“The basic aim of this conference is not to deny or to prove the
Holocaust but is to provide an opportunity for researchers from
Europe to give their views about this historical phenomenon,” he added.
Toeben, who maintains the existence of gas chambers is an “outright
lie” and brought with him a model of the Treblinka extermination camp
to this end, praised Ahmadinejad’s stance on the Holocaust.
“He has clearly seen the importance the Holocaust has for the rest of
the world, which is beholden to the Holocaust as a dogma, as an
unquestioning dogma,” he told AFP before giving his paper on “The
Holocaust: A Murder Weapon”.
David Duke, a US white supremacist and former Klu Klux Klan member,
said he believed it was “scandalous” that Europeans could be sent to
prison for expressing opinions about the Holocaust.
“I think that Ahmadinejad is a very courageous man to talk about some
of these issues,” he said.
Other participants at the “Study of the Holocaust: A Global
Perspective” included other Western “revisionists” along with Iranian
“experts” and members of an anti-Zionist Jewish ultra-Orthodox sect
which rejects the existence of Israel.
Iran had refused to disclose the identity of the participants before
Monday’s opening of the two-day meeting, saying they risked having
their passports confiscated if their home countries found out.
Khaled Kasab Mahameed, an Israeli Arab who wanted to speak out
against Holocaust denial at the conference, meanwhile said in
Nazareth he had been denied a visa to enter Iran.
The Islamic republic insists that it is well positioned to hold a
conference on the Holocaust and angrily rejects charges of anti-
Semitism, pointing to the continued existence in Iran of a community
of 25,000 Jews.
However after a call by Ahmadinejad for Israel to be “wiped from the
map” and amid continued concerns over the Iranian nuclear programme,
Western countries have lost little time in savaging the event.
The United States denounced the conference, Germany summoned the
Iranian charge d’affaires while France warned it would condemn the
meeting with the utmost firmness if it propagated revisionist ideas.
The conference is the latest brush with controversy for the Islamic
republic, which is already facing UN sanctions for failing to agree
to halt sensitive nuclear work.
Historians of the Third Reich, basing their figures on original Nazi
documents, generally believe around six million Jews were killed in
the Holocaust, although some estimates are slightly lower or higher.
Hitler’s regime also killed millions of non-Jews.
It is a crime to deny the Holocaust in a dozen European countries,
including Germany and Austria.
David Irving, a British “revisionist” who attempted to argue that the
toll was greatly exaggerated and to play down Hitler’s role, was
jailed by a Vienna court for three years in February for denying the
Holocaust.