[Dialogue] Holocaust Deniers and Skeptics Gather in Iran

[Harry Wainwright]

 <http://www.nytimes.com/>  <http://www.nytimes.com/> The New York Times
<http://www.nytimes.com/> 

 




  _____  

December 11, 2006

Holocaust Deniers and Skeptics Gather in Iran 

By NAZILA FATHI

TEHRAN, Dec. 11 - Holocaust deniers and skeptics from around the world
gathered at a government-sponsored conference here today to discuss their
theories about whether six million Jews were indeed killed by the Nazis
during World War II and whether gas chambers existed. 

In a speech opening the two-day conference, Rasoul Mousavi, head of the
Iranian Foreign Ministry's Institute for Political and International
Studies, which organized the event, said it was an opportunity for scholars
to discuss the subject "away from Western taboos and the restriction imposed
on them in Europe."

The foreign ministry had said that 67 foreign researchers from 30 countries
were scheduled to take part. Among those speaking today are David Duke, the
American white-supremacist politician and former Ku Klux Klan
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/k/ku_klux
_klan/index.html?inline=nyt-org>  leader, and Georges Thiel, a French writer
who has been prosecuted in France over his denials of the Holocaust. 

Mr. Duke's remarks late this afternoon are expected to assert that no gas
chambers or extermination camps were actually built during the war, on the
ground that killing Jews that way would have been much too bothersome and
expensive when the Nazis could have used much simpler methods, according to
an advance summary of his speech published by the institute. 

"Depicting Jews as the overwhelming victims of the Holocaust gave the moral
high ground to the Allies as victors of the war, and allowed Jews to
establish a state on the occupied land of Palestine," Mr. Duke's paper says,
according to the summary.

One of the first scheduled speakers, Robert Faurisson of France, also called
the Holocaust a myth created to justify the occupation of Palestine.

The conference is being held at the behest of Iran's president, Mahmoud
Ahmadinejad
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/a/mahmoud_ahmadi
nejad/index.html?inline=nyt-per> , who likewise called the Holocaust a myth
last year, and repeated a well-known slogan from the early days of the 1979
revolution in Iran, "Israel must be wiped off the map." He has spoken
several times since then about a need to establish whether the Holocaust
actually happened. 

Most of the speakers at the conference today praised Mr. Ahmadinejad's
comments. 

Bendikt Frings, 48, a psychologist from Germany, said he believed Mr.
Ahmadinejad was "an honest direct man," and said he had come to the
conference to thank him for what he had initiated.

"We are forbidden to have such a conference in Germany," he said. " All my
childhood, we waited for something like this."

Toben Feredrick, from Australia, said Mr. Ahmadinejad has opened an issue
"which is morally and intellectually crippling the Western society." 

"People are imprisoned in Germany for denying the Holocaust," he added. 

Mr. Feredrick said he was jailed for six months in 1999 because of his
ideas, and that a court in Germany has ordered him arrested if he speaks out
publicly again denying that the Holocaust took place.

Other Western "revisionists" presented what they called new facts about the
Holocaust at the conference, which also attracted attendees from some
ultra-Orthodox Jews belonging to anti-Zionist sects that reject the state of
Israel. One participant wearing the traditional long black coat and hat of
such groups wore a badge saying: "A Jew, not a Zionist." 

It was not entirely clear how the lineup of speakers at the conference was
set. The Institute's website had invited scholars and researchers to submit
papers in advance for consideration, but revealed little about how they were
evaluated. The Iranian foreign ministry also provided little information
about participants, saying that it feared they would be prosecuted by their
home countries. 

The conference included an exhibition today of various photos, posters and
other material meant to contradict the accepted version of events, that the
Nazis murdered millions of Jews and other "undesirables" in death camps
during the war. New captions in Persian on some familiar photos of corpses
at the camps argued that they were victims of typhus, not the German state. 

Anti-Zionist literature, including a 2004 book by the American author
Michael Collins Piper, about Zionist influence in America, was offered for
sale to visitors at the conference. So, apparently, was a video recording of
12 Holocaust survivors telling their stories, suggesting that the views
represented at the conference may not have been entirely one-sided. 

The conference prompted outrage in the West. The German government summoned
the Iranian charge d'affaires in Berlin to complain. The French Foreign
Minister, Philippe Douste-Blazy, warned that the conference would be
strongly condemned if it propagated claims denying the Holocaust. 

Iran also organized an exhibition last summer of cartoons about the
Holocaust, which outraged Jews inside Iran and out. 

Iranian Jewish leaders reacted angrily to Mr. Ahmadinejad's
Holocaust-denying comments last year, issuing a statement saying that his
words were spreading fear among Jews in Iran.

"We consider the Holocaust as a fact and a disgrace for humanity," Haround
Yashayai, a leading voice among Iranian Jews, said today. "We cannot say
that such a conference cannot be held here. We have condemned similar events
in the past, and see no reason to condemn it again." 

 

Copyright <http://www.nytimes.com/ref/membercenter/help/copyright.html>
2006 The New York Times Company <http://www.nytco.com/>  

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