Holocaust conference begins in Teheran

 

Extremist Jews from the anti-Zionist sect Natorei Karta were among those participating in the event.
Photo: AP

Iran opened a conference on the Holocaust on Monday, saying it would not be an attempt to deny the World War II genocide but merely to discuss it in an unrestricted atmosphere.

However, the conference was initiated by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who has described the Holocaust as a "myth" and called for Israel to be wiped off the map.

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The organizers, the Foreign Ministry's Institute for Political and International Studies (IPIS), said the two-day conference has drawn 67 foreign researchers from 30 countries.

In his opening speech, the institute's chief, Rasoul Mousavi, said the conference "seeks neither to deny or prove the Holocaust.

"It is just to provide an appropriate scientific atmosphere for scholars to offer their opinions in freedom about a historical issue," Mousavi said.

He said the conference provided an opportunity to discuss "questions" about the Holocaust away from Western taboos and the restrictions imposed on scholars in Europe.

Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki dismissed the foreign criticism as "predictable," telling conference delegates in a speech that there was "no logical reason for opposing this conference."

"The objective for organizing this conference is to create an atmosphere to raise various opinions about a historical issue. We are not seeking to deny or prove the Holocaust," Mottaki said.

Meanwhile, Yad Vashem on Sunday voiced renewed alarm over Iran's continued Holocaust denial, lambasting the Islamic Republic's latest attempt to "paint its extremist agenda with a scholarly brush."

"The Iranian government's pseudo-academic conference... is an effort to mainstream Holocaust denial and must be unequivocally rejected," Israel's Holocaust center said in a statement.

Yad Vashem will host a seminar on Thursday for the diplomatic corps stationed in Israel entitled "Holocaust Denial: Paving the Way to Genocide."

"There is only one reason for this conference, and that is to spread anti-Semitic propaganda and to besmirch the Jewish people and the State of Israel," said Nazi hunter Dr. Efraim Zuroff, who heads the Israel office of the Los Angeles-based Simon Wiesenthal Center.

He noted that none of the individuals invited to speak at the event have any expertise whatsoever regarding the Holocaust, and the only reason they were invited to speak was because of their "relentless efforts" to attack Judaism, the Jewish people and the State of Israel.

Zuroff added that it was particularly discouraging and outrageous that extremist Jews from the virulent anti-Zionist sect Natorei Karta were participating in the event.

Iran has spent months preparing for the conference, even publicizing it during the September visit to Teheran of UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, who contradicted his hosts by saying the Holocaust was a historical fact and that an exhibition of anti-Holocausts cartoons, then on display in the city, promoted hatred.

The conference has been condemned by Germany, where denying the Holocaust is illegal, as well as by Israel and the United States.

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Magal
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