International Conference to Review the Global Vision of the Holocaust
Encyclopedia
The International Conference to Review the Global Vision of the Holocaust was a two-day conference that opened on December 11, 2006, in Tehran
Tehran
Tehran , sometimes spelled Teheran, is the capital of Iran and Tehran Province. With an estimated population of 8,429,807; it is also Iran's largest urban area and city, one of the largest cities in Western Asia, and is the world's 19th largest city.In the 20th century, Tehran was subject to...

, Iran
Iran
Iran , officially the Islamic Republic of Iran , is a country in Southern and Western Asia. The name "Iran" has been in use natively since the Sassanian era and came into use internationally in 1935, before which the country was known to the Western world as Persia...

. Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki
Manouchehr Mottaki
Manouchehr Mottaki is an Iranian politician and diplomat. He was the Iranian Minister of Foreign Affairs. Whilst technically appointed by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, he is considered to be closer to more pragmatic conservative factions and during the 2005 presidential election, he was the campaign...

 said the conference sought "neither to deny nor prove the Holocaust... [but] to provide an appropriate scientific atmosphere for scholars to offer their opinions in freedom about a historical issue." Notable attendees included David Duke
David Duke
David Ernest Duke is a former Grand Wizard of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan an American activist and writer, and former Republican Louisiana State Representative. He was also a former candidate in the Republican presidential primaries in 1992, and in the Democratic presidential primaries in...

, Moshe Aryeh Friedman
Moshe Aryeh Friedman
Moshe Aryeh Friedman currently living in Vienna, Austria is a former anti-Zionist political activist. He is best known for his participation in the International Conference to Review the Global Vision of the Holocaust held in 2006 in Tehran, Iran...

, Robert Faurisson
Robert Faurisson
Robert Faurisson is a French academic who is a Holocaust denier. Faurisson generated much controversy with a number of articles, published in the Journal of Historical Review and elsewhere, as well as various letters he has sent to French newspapers , which deny various aspects of the Holocaust,...

, Fredrick Töben, Richard Krege
Richard Krege
Richard Krege is an Australian engineer who claims to have carried out Ground Penetrating Radar or electromagnetic scanning in October 1999 of soil layers at the sites of the Treblinka extermination camp, and the Belzec camp....

, Ahmed Rami and Yisroel Dovid Weiss
Yisroel Dovid Weiss
Yisroel Dovid Weiss , a United States Haredi rabbi, is an activist and spokesman for a branch of Neturei Karta, an anti-Zionist grouping of Haredi Jews...

 of Neturei Karta
Neturei Karta
Neturei Karta is a Haredi Jewish group formally created in Jerusalem, British Mandate of Palestine, in 1938, splitting off from Agudas Yisroel...

.

The conference was widely described as a "Holocaust denial conference" or a "meeting of Holocaust deniers", and provoked worldwide criticism. The Vatican
Holy See
The Holy See is the episcopal jurisdiction of the Catholic Church in Rome, in which its Bishop is commonly known as the Pope. It is the preeminent episcopal see of the Catholic Church, forming the central government of the Church. As such, diplomatically, and in other spheres the Holy See acts and...

 condemned it, the White House
White House
The White House is the official residence and principal workplace of the president of the United States. Located at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW in Washington, D.C., the house was designed by Irish-born James Hoban, and built between 1792 and 1800 of white-painted Aquia sandstone in the Neoclassical...

 called it an "affront to the entire civilized world," and British Prime Minister Tony Blair
Tony Blair
Anthony Charles Lynton Blair is a former British Labour Party politician who served as the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 2 May 1997 to 27 June 2007. He was the Member of Parliament for Sedgefield from 1983 to 2007 and Leader of the Labour Party from 1994 to 2007...

 described it as "shocking beyond belief." Holocaust historians attending a separate conference in Berlin
Berlin
Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...

 organized to protest the Iranian one called it "an attempt to cloak anti-Semitism
Anti-Semitism
Antisemitism is suspicion of, hatred toward, or discrimination against Jews for reasons connected to their Jewish heritage. According to a 2005 U.S...

 in scholarly language."

Goals

According to the Iranian Foreign Ministry, the conference would not aim to deny or prove the Holocaust
The Holocaust
The Holocaust , also known as the Shoah , was the genocide of approximately six million European Jews and millions of others during World War II, a programme of systematic state-sponsored murder by Nazi...

, but to create opportunities "for suitable scientific research so that the hidden and unhidden angles of this most important political issue of the 20th century becomes more transparent." The event was organized by the ministry's Institute for Political & International Studies (IPIS).

The goal of the conference was to discuss the reality of the Nazis
Nazism
Nazism, the common short form name of National Socialism was the ideology and practice of the Nazi Party and of Nazi Germany...

' extermination of Jews during World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...

. The Foreign Minister of Iran and other officials stated that the conference was meant to "create an opportunity for thinkers who cannot express their views freely in Europe about the Holocaust".

According to the Iranian Foreign Minister: "If the official version of the Holocaust is thrown into doubt, then the identity and nature of Israel will be thrown into doubt. And if, during this review, it is proved that the Holocaust was a historical reality, then what is the reason for the Palestinians having to pay the cost of the Nazis' crimes?"

Attendees

There were 67 attendees from 30 countries.
American David Duke
David Duke
David Ernest Duke is a former Grand Wizard of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan an American activist and writer, and former Republican Louisiana State Representative. He was also a former candidate in the Republican presidential primaries in 1992, and in the Democratic presidential primaries in...

, a former Louisiana State Representative
Louisiana State Legislature
The Louisiana State Legislature is the state legislature of the U.S. state of Louisiana. It is bicameral body, comprising the lower house, the Louisiana House of Representatives with 105 representatives, and the upper house, the Louisiana Senate with 39 senators...

 and one-time Ku Klux Klan
Ku Klux Klan
Ku Klux Klan, often abbreviated KKK and informally known as the Klan, is the name of three distinct past and present far-right organizations in the United States, which have advocated extremist reactionary currents such as white supremacy, white nationalism, and anti-immigration, historically...

 leader, attended the conference. French writer Georges Thiel, who had been convicted under Holocaust denial laws in France, attended, as did Fredrick Töben
Gerald Fredrick Töben
Gerald Fredrick Töben is a German-born Australian citizen and founder and former director of the Adelaide Institute. He is the author of numerous works on education, political science and history, although he is best known for his Holocaust denial. Töben claims he cannot deny that which never...

 of Australia who had been imprisoned in Germany for three months in 1999 for Holocaust denial. Robert Faurisson
Robert Faurisson
Robert Faurisson is a French academic who is a Holocaust denier. Faurisson generated much controversy with a number of articles, published in the Journal of Historical Review and elsewhere, as well as various letters he has sent to French newspapers , which deny various aspects of the Holocaust,...

, a convicted Holocaust denier from France also attended, as well as Ahmed Rami, a Swedish
Sweden
Sweden , officially the Kingdom of Sweden , is a Nordic country on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. Sweden borders with Norway and Finland and is connected to Denmark by a bridge-tunnel across the Öresund....

-Moroccan
Morocco
Morocco , officially the Kingdom of Morocco , is a country located in North Africa. It has a population of more than 32 million and an area of 710,850 km², and also primarily administers the disputed region of the Western Sahara...

 Holocaust denier who was imprisoned in Sweden for inciting racial hatred. German psychologist and National Democratic Party of Germany
National Democratic Party of Germany
The National Democratic Party of Germany – The People's Union , is a far right German nationalist party. It was founded in 1964 a successor to the German Reich Party . Party statements self-identify as Germany's "only significant patriotic force"...

 (NPD) functionary Bendikt Frings was invited by Iranian Deputy Minister of Islamic Guidance Mohammad Ali Ramin; Frings said that he had waited for such a conference "all my childhood". The NPD is widely considered the most significant German Neo-Nazi party

Michele Renouf
Michele Renouf
Michèle Suzanne, Lady Renouf , is an Australian-born advertising model, now a British national, and a lifelong international television commercials actress with a thirty year membership of British Actors Equity....

, a British actress and defender of Holocaust denial author David Irving
David Irving
David John Cawdell Irving is an English writer,best known for his denial of the Holocaust, who specialises in the military and political history of World War II, with a focus on Nazi Germany...

 also attended. At the conference, Renouf claimed that the "terrible things" that happened to the Jews in World War II were brought upon by Jewish leaders.

Among the participants at the conference were six members of the anti-Zionist Jewish
Jews
The Jews , also known as the Jewish people, are a nation and ethnoreligious group originating in the Israelites or Hebrews of the Ancient Near East. The Jewish ethnicity, nationality, and religion are strongly interrelated, as Judaism is the traditional faith of the Jewish nation...

 organisation Neturei Karta
Neturei Karta
Neturei Karta is a Haredi Jewish group formally created in Jerusalem, British Mandate of Palestine, in 1938, splitting off from Agudas Yisroel...

, including Aharon Cohen who said he had come to the conference to put the Orthodox Jewish viewpoint across. Cohen also said that while the Holocaust indisputably happened, "in no way can it be used as a justification for perpetrating unjust acts against the Palestinians."

Shiraz Dossa, a professor of Political Science at St. Francis Xavier University
St. Francis Xavier University
St. Francis Xavier University is a post-secondary institution located in Antigonish, Nova Scotia. The school was founded in 1853, but did not offer degrees until 1868. The university has approximately 5000 students.-History:...

 in Nova Scotia
Nova Scotia
Nova Scotia is one of Canada's three Maritime provinces and is the most populous province in Atlantic Canada. The name of the province is Latin for "New Scotland," but "Nova Scotia" is the recognized, English-language name of the province. The provincial capital is Halifax. Nova Scotia is the...

, Canada
Canada
Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...

, presented a paper at the conference and was roundly vilified for his participation by the Canadian media and his university.

Jan Bernhoff, a computer teacher from Sweden, gave a presentation about the origins of the six million figure. Bernhoff had studied history at the University of Lund before turning to computer studies, and had presented his master thesis on the different ways historians had handled the death toll of the Holocaust from 1945 onward.

French
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...

 Holocaust denier Roger Garaudy
Roger Garaudy
Roger Garaudy or Ragaa Garaudy is a French philosopher. Formerly a prominent communist author, he has converted to Islam and written several books which have been controversial due to his anti-Zionist positions and denial of the Holocaust.-Early life, politics and religion:Born to Catholic and...

 was unable to attend the conference for health reasons. However, he reportedly sent a videotaped message supporting Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's view that Israel should cease to exist.

Denied permission

Israeli Arab lawyer Khaled Kasab Mahameed
Khaled Kasab Mahameed
Khaled Kasab Mahameed is an Arab Israeli Muslim lawyer living in Nazareth, Israel.- Career :In March 2005 he established , a Holocaust Memorial located in Nazareth. The small museum documents the horrors of the Holocaust, showcasing photographs acquired from Yad Vashem, the world-renowned Holocaust...

 was denied permission to attend the conference by Iran after it was discovered that he holds Israeli citizenship. He had been previously invited to attend by the Iranian government; however Iran does not grant visas
Visa (document)
A visa is a document showing that a person is authorized to enter the territory for which it was issued, subject to permission of an immigration official at the time of actual entry. The authorization may be a document, but more commonly it is a stamp endorsed in the applicant's passport...

 to Israelis. According to Ha'aretz, Mahameed intended "to tell the conference that the Holocaust did happen and that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's position of Holocaust denial is wrong". He stated:

Everything that happened must be internalized and the facts must not be denied... It is the obligation of all Arabs and all Muslims to understand the significance of the Holocaust. If their goal is to understand their adversary, they must understand the Holocaust... The naqba [disaster] the Palestinians experienced in 1948 is small compared to the Holocaust, but the political implications of the Holocaust have made its terrors a burden on the Palestinian people alone... The Holocaust has all the reasons for the creation of the Arab-Israeli conflict, but also has potential to bring peace."

Conference events

The Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was quoted as saying: "The Zionist regime will be wiped out soon the same way the Soviet Union was, and humanity will achieve freedom [and] elections should be held among] Jews, Christians and Muslims so the population of Palestine can select their government and destiny for themselves in a democratic manner."

Papers delivered by participants from countries ranging from Austria to Indonesia included "A Challenge to the Official Holocaust Story," and "Holocaust, the Achilles Heel of a Primordial Jewish Trojan."

David Duke
David Duke
David Ernest Duke is a former Grand Wizard of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan an American activist and writer, and former Republican Louisiana State Representative. He was also a former candidate in the Republican presidential primaries in 1992, and in the Democratic presidential primaries in...

 gave a speech in which he said: "In Europe you can freely question, ridicule and deny Jesus Christ
Jesus
Jesus of Nazareth , commonly referred to as Jesus Christ or simply as Jesus or Christ, is the central figure of Christianity...

. The same is true for the prophet Muhammad
Muhammad
Muhammad |ligature]] at U+FDF4 ;Arabic pronunciation varies regionally; the first vowel ranges from ~~; the second and the last vowel: ~~~. There are dialects which have no stress. In Egypt, it is pronounced not in religious contexts...

, and nothing will happen to you. But offer a single question of the smallest part of the Holocaust and you face prison."

Frederick Töben told the conference: "Minds are being switched off to the Holocaust dogma as it is being sold as a historical fact and yet we are not able to question it. This is mental rape."

Rabbi Aharon Cohen told the conference: "There is no doubt whatsoever, that during World War II there developed a terrible and catastrophic policy and action of genocide
Genocide
Genocide is defined as "the deliberate and systematic destruction, in whole or in part, of an ethnic, racial, religious, or national group", though what constitutes enough of a "part" to qualify as genocide has been subject to much debate by legal scholars...

 perpetrated by Nazi Germany
Nazi Germany
Nazi Germany , also known as the Third Reich , but officially called German Reich from 1933 to 1943 and Greater German Reich from 26 June 1943 onward, is the name commonly used to refer to the state of Germany from 1933 to 1945, when it was a totalitarian dictatorship ruled by...

 against the Jewish people, confirmed by innumerable eyewitness survivors and fully documented again and again...The figure of six million is regularly quoted. One may wish to dispute this actual figure, but the crime was just as dreadful whether the millions of victims numbered six million, five million or four million. The method of murder is also irrelevant, whether it was by gas chamber
Gas chamber
A gas chamber is an apparatus for killing humans or animals with gas, consisting of a sealed chamber into which a poisonous or asphyxiant gas is introduced. The most commonly used poisonous agent is hydrogen cyanide; carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide have also been used...

, firing squads or whatever. The evil was the same. It would be a terrible affront to the memory of those who perished to belittle the guilt of the crime in any way.

Richard Krege
Richard Krege
Richard Krege is an Australian engineer who claims to have carried out Ground Penetrating Radar or electromagnetic scanning in October 1999 of soil layers at the sites of the Treblinka extermination camp, and the Belzec camp....

 maintained his suggestion of diesel exhaust gas chambers to be an "outright lie," and showed a model of the Treblinka extermination camp
Treblinka extermination camp
Treblinka was a Nazi extermination camp in occupied Poland during World War II near the village of Treblinka in the modern-day Masovian Voivodeship of Poland. The camp, which was constructed as part of Operation Reinhard, operated between and ,. During this time, approximately 850,000 men, women...

 to illustrate this. He claimed that up to 10,000 people died in the camp, but of disease, instead of planned extermination. "There is no scientific proof to show that this place was an extermination camp. All that exists are the words of some people."

Conclusions

According to IRNA, the conference participants agreed to start a world foundation for Holocaust studies with Mohammad-Ali Ramin
Mohammad-Ali Ramin
Mohammad-Ali Ramin is the deputy culture minister for press in Iran and was organisator of the International Conference to Review the Global Vision of the Holocaust. He is also an Iranian political analyst, and the head of a self-made group called "Nuclei of Sacrificers for Velayat"...

 as its Secretary General. The stated purpose of the was to "find out the truth about holocaust." More immediate tasks included preparing for the next Holocaust conference and composing the foundation's letter of association. The main office would initially be located in Tehran, though Ramin said it will eventually move to Berlin
Berlin
Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...

, "once proper grounds are prepared".

Iran

Iran's sole Jewish member of parliament Maurice Motamed
Maurice Motamed
Maurice Motamed or Morris Motamed was elected in 2000 and again in 2004 as a Jewish member of the Iranian Parliament , representing the Jewish community which has by Iran's constitution retained a reserved seat since the Persian Constitution of 1906.- Career :In Parliament, he has been active in...

 said: "Holding this conference after having a competition of cartoons about the Holocaust has put a lot of pressure on Jews all over the world;" and that "The conference has upset Iran's 25,000-strong Jewish community."

Though reformist demonstrations had been rare since Ahmadinejad took office, a few dozen students burnt pictures of him and chanted "death to the dictator" as Ahmadinejad gave a speech at Amirkabir University of Technology
Amirkabir University of Technology
Amirkabir University of Technology , formerly called the Tehran Polytechnic is a public research university located in Tehran, Iran. AUT is one of the most prestigious universities and the first established technical university in Iran...

 in Tehran on 12 December 2006. One student activist said the protest was against the "shameful" Holocaust conference, and added that Ahmadinejad had "brought to our country Nazis and racists from around the world." Ahmadinejad responded by saying: "Everyone should know that Ahmadinejad is prepared to be burnt in the path of true freedom, independence and justice."

However, Ali Akbar Mohtashamipour, Secretary-General of the International Congress to Support the Palestinian Intifada
Palestinian Intifada
The Palestinian Intifada may refer to:*The First Intifada began in 1987. Violence declined in 1991 and came to an end with the signing of the Oslo accords and the creation of the Palestinian National Authority...

, expressed support for the conference, saying that the "Western and Zionist media have always been aggrandising the dimensions of the reality of Holocaust, mixing a bit of truth with a great deal of lies."

International

Supranational bodies
United Nations
United Nations
The United Nations is an international organization whose stated aims are facilitating cooperation in international law, international security, economic development, social progress, human rights, and achievement of world peace...

 Secretary General Ban Ki-moon
Ban Ki-moon
Ban Ki-moon is the eighth and current Secretary-General of the United Nations, after succeeding Kofi Annan in 2007. Before going on to be Secretary-General, Ban was a career diplomat in South Korea's Ministry of Foreign Affairs and in the United Nations. He entered diplomatic service the year he...

  said "Denying historical facts, especially on such an important subject as the Holocaust, is just not acceptable. Nor is it acceptable to call for the elimination of any State or people. I would like to see this fundamental principle respected both in rhetoric and in practice by all the members of the international community. United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan himself visited Iran and had a series of dialogues with the Iranian leadership and other senior-level people. Wherever and when, and if the situation requires me to do, I am also prepared to engage in dialogue with the Iranian leadership."
  • During a visit to Iran in September 2006, then United Nations
    United Nations
    The United Nations is an international organization whose stated aims are facilitating cooperation in international law, international security, economic development, social progress, human rights, and achievement of world peace...

     Secretary General Kofi Annan
    Kofi Annan
    Kofi Atta Annan is a Ghanaian diplomat who served as the seventh Secretary-General of the UN from 1 January 1997 to 31 December 2006...

     also criticized this conference, saying " I think the tragedy of the Holocaust is an undeniable historical fact and we should really accept that fact and teach people what happened in World War II and ensure it is never repeated.".


States - Foreign Minister Karel De Gucht
Karel De Gucht
Karel Lodewijk Georgette Emmerence De Gucht is a Belgian politician who has been the European Commissioner for Trade since 2010...

 said he "condemned the revisionistic and negationistic expressions (of Iran) and the repeated questioning of the right to exist
Right to exist
The right to exist is said to be an attribute of nations. According to an essay by the nineteenth century French philosopher Ernest Renan, a state has the right to exist when individuals are willing to sacrifice their own interests for the community it represents. Unlike self-determination, the...

 for the state of Israel."
- Minister of Foreign affairs Peter MacKay
Peter MacKay
Peter Gordon MacKay, PC, QC, MP is a lawyer and politician from Nova Scotia, Canada. He is the Member of Parliament for Central Nova and currently serves as Minister of National Defence in the Cabinet of Canada....

 said that the conference was "an outrage. It was an insult to Holocaust victims. It was an insult to their descendants. Canada's new government and I am sure many others in this House (of Commons) and around the globe condemn this conference, just as we have previously condemned the Iranian president's comments about the Holocaust as hateful."
- Prior to the conference, Foreign Minister Philippe Douste-Blazy
Philippe Douste-Blazy
Philippe Douste-Blazy is a French centre-right politician. He served as Minister for Health , Minister of Culture and Foreign Minister in the cabinet of Dominique de Villepin .Douste-Blazy is also a cardiologist and Christian Democrat politician from Lourdes...

 said France would condemn the conference if participants used it for Holocaust denial. After the conference opened, Douste-Blazy stated to French RTL radio, "I reiterate our utter condemnation of this conference and the revisionist ideas it’s given a platform to." He cited this conference as further evidence of Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's "shocking" and "unacceptable" statements, and that this conference violated the 2005 United Nations resolution on Holocaust remembrance, which "rejects any denial of the Holocaust as a historic event, either in full or in part."
- Chancellor Angela Merkel
Angela Merkel
Angela Dorothea Merkel is the current Chancellor of Germany . Merkel, elected to the Bundestag from Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, has been the chairwoman of the Christian Democratic Union since 2000, and chairwoman of the CDU-CSU parliamentary coalition from 2002 to 2005.From 2005 to 2009 she led a...

, after a meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, said "I would like to make clear that we reject with all our strength the conference taking place in Iran about the supposed nonexistence of the Holocaust." According to the New York Times, the "German government summoned the Iranian chargé d’affaires in Berlin
Berlin
Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...

 to complain."
- Prime Minister Ehud Olmert
Ehud Olmert
Ehud Olmert is an Israeli politician and lawyer. He served as Prime Minister of Israel from 2006 to 2009, as a Cabinet Minister from 1988 to 1992 and from 2003 to 2006, and as Mayor of Jerusalem from 1993 to 2003....

 "denounced the conference before embarking on a two-day trip to Germany" calling the gathering "a sick phenomenon that shows the depths of hatred of the fundamentalist
Islamic fundamentalism
Islamic fundamentalism is a term used to describe religious ideologies seen as advocating a return to the "fundamentals" of Islam: the Quran and the Sunnah. Definitions of the term vary. According to Christine L...

 Iranian regime." Tzipi Livni
Tzipi Livni
Tzipporah Malkah "Tzipi" Livni is an Israeli lawyer and politician. She is the current Israeli Opposition Leader and leader of Kadima, the largest party in the Knesset. Raised an ardent nationalist, Livni has become one of her nation's leading voices for the two-state solution. In Israel she has...

, the Israeli Foreign Minister, "commented on the Holocaust conference at a Knesset
Knesset
The Knesset is the unicameral legislature of Israel, located in Givat Ram, Jerusalem.-Role in Israeli Government :The legislative branch of the Israeli government, the Knesset passes all laws, elects the President and Prime Minister , approves the cabinet, and supervises the work of the government...

 meeting ... and said, 'I didn’t come to this meeting to argue with the evil one from Tehran and his allies. He can’t erase the pain of the survivors.'"
- The Ministry of Foreign Affairs said on its website that Poland "expresses its strong disapproval of the conference, which contradicts the idea of the International Day of Commemoration in Memory of the Victims of the Holocaust established by the UN General Assembly, and celebrated on 27 January...Any attempt at contesting this truth arouses serious concern in Poland, where 6 million people were victims of the Nazi genocide". The Ministry also consigned informational material from the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum to Iranian scholars, seeking to "deepen their knowledge" of the Holocaust.
- The Foreign Ministry said it had "protested against the distortion of history and attempts to conceal the truth regarding Nazi crimes, including the Holocaust."
- Minister for Foreign Affairs
Minister for Foreign Affairs (Sweden)
The Minister for Foreign Affairs is the foreign minister of Sweden and the head of the Ministry for Foreign Affairs.The office was instituted in 1809 as a result of the constitutional Instrument of Government promulgated in the same year. Until 1876 the office was called Prime Minister for Foreign...

 Carl Bildt
Carl Bildt
, Honorary KCMG is a Swedish politician, diplomat and nobleman. Formerly Prime Minister of Sweden from 1991 to 1994 and leader of the liberal conservative Moderate Party from 1986 to 1999, Bildt has served as Swedish Minister for Foreign Affairs since 6 October 2006...

 said: "The Iranian regime's statements about Israel and the questioning of the Holocaust are completely unacceptable, as well as Iran's questioning of the state of Israel's right to exist."
- Foreign Ministry spokesman Johann Aeschlimann said that the ministry condemned any querying of the right of Israel to exist, as had once again happened in Tehran, and of the Holocaust. "The Shoah
Shoah
Shoah may refer to:*The Holocaust*Shoah , documentary directed by Claude Lanzmann * A Shoah Foundation...

 is a historical fact. It is unacceptable to call this into question."
- Prime Minister Tony Blair
Tony Blair
Anthony Charles Lynton Blair is a former British Labour Party politician who served as the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 2 May 1997 to 27 June 2007. He was the Member of Parliament for Sedgefield from 1983 to 2007 and Leader of the Labour Party from 1994 to 2007...

 denounced the conference as "shocking beyond belief." Blair also said that it was "a symbol of sectarianism
Sectarianism
Sectarianism, according to one definition, is bigotry, discrimination or hatred arising from attaching importance to perceived differences between subdivisions within a group, such as between different denominations of a religion, class, regional or factions of a political movement.The ideological...

 and hatred toward people of another religion. I mean, to go and invite the former head of the Ku Klux Klan to a conference in Tehran which disputes the millions of people who died in the Holocaust … what further evidence do you need that this regime is extreme?"
- The State Department described the Iranian event as "yet another disgraceful act on this particular subject by the regime in Tehran. It is just flabbergasting that they continue — that the leadership of that regime continues to deny that six million-plus people were killed in the Holocaust," spokesman Sean McCormack
Sean McCormack
Sean McCormack is a former United States Assistant Secretary of State. He was sworn in as Assistant Secretary of State for Public Affairs and Department Spokesman on June 2, 2005, and served until January 20, 2009.-Early career:...

 said. The White House
White House
The White House is the official residence and principal workplace of the president of the United States. Located at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW in Washington, D.C., the house was designed by Irish-born James Hoban, and built between 1792 and 1800 of white-painted Aquia sandstone in the Neoclassical...

 called it an "affront to the entire civilised world."
- The government issued a rejection letter disapproving of the Conference and its results. In a statement on its website, the Foreign Secretary wrote that: "The government of Mexico, through the office of the Foreign Secretary, agrees with the international disapproval of the Iranian Conference on the Holocaust...and rejects all negation, either partial or total, of the Holocaust as historical fact."(translation)

Religious leaders - The Vatican condemned the conference.
  • The Archbishop of Canterbury
    Archbishop of Canterbury
    The Archbishop of Canterbury is the senior bishop and principal leader of the Church of England, the symbolic head of the worldwide Anglican Communion, and the diocesan bishop of the Diocese of Canterbury. In his role as head of the Anglican Communion, the archbishop leads the third largest group...

     declared the conference a "disgrace", and called for the Holocaust to be memorialised in order to prevent its denial by future generations.

  • Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi of Israel
    Chief Rabbinate of Israel
    The Chief Rabbinate of Israel is recognized by law as the supreme halakhic and spiritual authority for the Jewish people in Israel. The Chief Rabbinate Council assists the two chief rabbis, who alternate in its presidency. It has legal and administrative authority to organize religious...

     Yonah Metzger called upon Jews worldwide to shun members of Neturei Karta who attended the conference and refuse them entrance to synagogues.

Non-governmental

Thirty four of the world’s leading policy institutes released a statement on 15 December that they would break off all relations with Iran's Institute for Political and International Studies. Signatories included the directors of the International Institute for Strategic Studies
International Institute for Strategic Studies
The International Institute for Strategic Studies is a British research institute in the area of international affairs. It describes itself as "the world’s leading authority on political-military conflict"...

 in London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...

; the Aspen Institute
Aspen Institute
The Aspen Institute is an international nonprofit organization founded in 1950 as the Aspen Institute of Humanistic Studies. The organization is dedicated to "fostering enlightened leadership, the appreciation of timeless ideas and values, and open-minded dialogue on contemporary issues." The...

 in Berlin
Berlin
Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...

; the German Marshall Fund
German Marshall Fund
The German Marshall Fund of the United States is a nonpartisan American public policy and grantmaking institution dedicated to promoting greater cooperation and understanding between North America and Europe....

 in Washington
Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly referred to as Washington, "the District", or simply D.C., is the capital of the United States. On July 16, 1790, the United States Congress approved the creation of a permanent national capital as permitted by the U.S. Constitution....

; the Geneva Centre for Security Policy; the Center for International Studies and Research in Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...

; the United States Studies Centre in Sydney
Sydney
Sydney is the most populous city in Australia and the state capital of New South Wales. Sydney is located on Australia's south-east coast of the Tasman Sea. As of June 2010, the greater metropolitan area had an approximate population of 4.6 million people...

, Australia
Australia
Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...

; and the Center for International Relations in Warsaw
Warsaw
Warsaw is the capital and largest city of Poland. It is located on the Vistula River, roughly from the Baltic Sea and from the Carpathian Mountains. Its population in 2010 was estimated at 1,716,855 residents with a greater metropolitan area of 2,631,902 residents, making Warsaw the 10th most...

.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali
Ayaan Hirsi Ali
Ayaan Hirsi Magan Ali is a Somali-Dutch feminist and atheist activist, writer, politician who strongly opposes circumcision and female genital cutting. She is the daughter of the Somali politician and opposition leader Hirsi Magan Isse and is a founder of the women's rights organisation the AHA...

 called on Western leaders to wake up to the reality of the situation. She stated "For the majority of Muslims in the world the Holocaust is not a major historical event they deny; they simply do not know because they were never informed. Worse, most of us are groomed to wish for a Holocaust of Jews." She says that she never learned anything about the Holocaust while she was studying in Saudi Arabia
Saudi Arabia
The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia , commonly known in British English as Saudi Arabia and in Arabic as as-Sa‘ūdiyyah , is the largest state in Western Asia by land area, constituting the bulk of the Arabian Peninsula, and the second-largest in the Arab World...

 and Kenya
Kenya
Kenya , officially known as the Republic of Kenya, is a country in East Africa that lies on the equator, with the Indian Ocean to its south-east...

. She called for action from charities: "Western and Christian charities in the third world should take it upon themselves to inform Muslims and non-Muslims alike, in the areas where they are active, about the Holocaust."

A number of Arab journalists in Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and the United Kingdom have criticized this conference, arguing that it included unqualified non-historian speakers, spread the hate and propaganda of an extremist Iranian government, defended the heinous crimes of the Nazis, damaged Iran diplomatically at a time when its foreign relations were difficult, and reflected a lack of human and cultural sensitivity.

Counter conferences

  • In reaction to this conference, a counter conference on anti-Semitism and Holocaust denial was organised in Berlin entitled "The Holocaust in Transnational Memory." The keynote speaker was American Holocaust historian Raul Hilberg
    Raul Hilberg
    Raul Hilberg was an Austrian-born American political scientist and historian. He was widely considered to be the world's preeminent scholar of the Holocaust, and his three-volume, 1,273-page magnum opus, The Destruction of the European Jews, is regarded as a seminal study of the Nazi Final...

    , author of "The Destruction of the European Jews
    The Destruction of the European Jews
    The Destruction of the European Jews is a book published in 1961 by historian Raul Hilberg. Hilberg revised his work in 1985, and it appeared in a new three-volume edition. It is largely held to be the first comprehensive historical study of the Holocaust. According to Holocaust historian, Michael R...

    ." Topics discussed included the mechanisms and intentions at the root of the various forms of Holocaust denial and the polarization of the Muslim and Western worlds. According to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency
    Jewish Telegraphic Agency
    The Jewish Telegraphic Agency is an international news agency serving Jewish community newspapers and media around the world. The JTA was founded on February 6, 1917, by Jacob Landau as the Jewish Correspondence Bureau in The Hague with the mandate of collecting and disseminating news among and...

    , "speakers emphasized that Holocaust denial is a form of anti-Semitism and that Ahmadinejad is using the theme, together with his threats against Israel, to gain international standing among Arabs." Israeli scholar David Menashri stated that a "silent majority" of Iranians would reject Ahmadinejad's Holocaust denial. Holocaust historians attending this conference in Berlin
    Berlin
    Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...

     called the Iranian conference "an attempt to cloak antisemitism in scholarly language."

  • A symposium was also held in Jerusalem, entitled, "Holocaust Denial: Paving the Way to Genocide," for members of the diplomatic corps. Its scientific adviser, Yehuda Bauer
    Yehuda Bauer
    Yehuda Bauer is a historian and scholar of the Holocaust. He is a Professor of Holocaust Studies at the Avraham Harman Institute of Contemporary Jewry at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.-Biography:...

    , said Iran's Holocaust denial was raising objections among Arab intellectuals. Speakers included American Ambassador to the U.N. John Bolton
    John R. Bolton
    John Robert Bolton is an American lawyer and diplomat who has served in several Republican presidential administrations. He served as the U.S. Permanent Representative to the United Nations from August 2005 until December 2006 on a recess appointment...

    ; former Israeli Ambassador to the U.N. Dore Gold
    Dore Gold
    Dore Gold is an Israeli statesman who has served in various diplomatic positions under several Israeli governments. He is the current President of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs...

    ; Israel's Ambassador to the United States Meir Roseanne; Canadian Parliament member Irwin Cotler
    Irwin Cotler
    Irwin Cotler, PC, OC, MP was Canada's Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada from 2003 until the Liberal government of Paul Martin lost power following the 2006 federal election. He was first elected to the Canadian House of Commons for the constituency of Mount Royal in a by-election...

    ; and Harvard University
    Harvard University
    Harvard University is a private Ivy League university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, established in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature. Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and the first corporation chartered in the country...

     professor Alan Dershowitz
    Alan Dershowitz
    Alan Morton Dershowitz is an American lawyer, jurist, and political commentator. He has spent most of his career at Harvard Law School where in 1967, at the age of 28, he became the youngest full professor of law in its history...

    . One proposal was entitled, "Bring Ahmadinejad to Justice For Incitement to Genocide." Speaking at the symposium, Yigal Carmon
    Yigal Carmon
    Yigal Carmon is the president and founder of the Middle East Media Research Institute , an organization which monitors and translates Arabic and Persian publications, radio and TV broadcasts and religious sermons into many languages and circulates them over the Internet.-Career:*Colonel, IDF...

     of the Middle East Media Research Institute
    Middle East Media Research Institute
    The Middle East Media Research Institute is a Middle Eastern not for profit press monitoring organization with headquarters located in Washington, DC. MEMRI was co-founded in 1998 by Yigal Carmon, a former colonel in the Israeli military intelligence and Meyrav Wurmser, an Israeli-born, American...

     said "the Iranian regime's Holocaust denial is not a manifestation of irrational hatred, but a premeditated and cold-blooded instrument to achieve its goals [of the] denial of Israel's legitimacy [and the] elimination of the Zionist Entity, i.e. Israel."

  • The Simon Wiesenthal Center
    Simon Wiesenthal Center
    The Simon Wiesenthal Center , with headquarters in Los Angeles, California, was established in 1977 and named for Simon Wiesenthal, the Nazi hunter. According to its mission statement, it is "an international Jewish human rights organization dedicated to repairing the world one step at a time...

     in Los Angeles
    Los Ángeles
    Los Ángeles is the capital of the province of Biobío, in the commune of the same name, in Region VIII , in the center-south of Chile. It is located between the Laja and Biobío rivers. The population is 123,445 inhabitants...

     planned to hold a teleconference during the same period as the Iranian conference which would focus on individual stories from Holocaust survivors.

  • The Bali Holocaust Conference
    Bali Holocaust Conference
    The Bali Holocaust Conference was held on June 12, 2007 in Jimbaran, Bali, Indonesia. The conference aimed to promote religious tolerance and affirm the reality of the Holocaust and was attended by rabbis, Holocaust witnesses, and Muslim leaders, teachers and students...

     was held in June 2007 in Bali
    Bali
    Bali is an Indonesian island located in the westernmost end of the Lesser Sunda Islands, lying between Java to the west and Lombok to the east...

    , Indonesia
    Indonesia
    Indonesia , officially the Republic of Indonesia , is a country in Southeast Asia and Oceania. Indonesia is an archipelago comprising approximately 13,000 islands. It has 33 provinces with over 238 million people, and is the world's fourth most populous country. Indonesia is a republic, with an...

    . The conference aimed to promote religious tolerance
    Religious toleration
    Toleration is "the practice of deliberately allowing or permitting a thing of which one disapproves. One can meaningfully speak of tolerating, ie of allowing or permitting, only if one is in a position to disallow”. It has also been defined as "to bear or endure" or "to nourish, sustain or preserve"...

     and affirm the reality of the Holocaust
    The Holocaust
    The Holocaust , also known as the Shoah , was the genocide of approximately six million European Jews and millions of others during World War II, a programme of systematic state-sponsored murder by Nazi...

     and was attended by rabbis, Holocaust witnesses, and Muslim leaders, teachers and students. This event was convened by former Indonesian president
    President of Indonesia
    The President of the Republic of Indonesia is the head of state and the head of government of the Republic of Indonesia.The first president was Sukarno and the current president is Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono.- Sukarno era :...

     Abdurrahman Wahid
    Abdurrahman Wahid
    Abdurrahman Wahid, born Abdurrahman Addakhil , colloquially known as , was an Indonesian Muslim religious and political leader who served as the President of Indonesia from 1999 to 2001...

    , and was sponsored by the Wahid Institute, the Simon Wisenthal Center in Los Angeles, and the Libforall Foundation. Wahid stated that although he is a good friend of Iran
    Iran
    Iran , officially the Islamic Republic of Iran , is a country in Southern and Western Asia. The name "Iran" has been in use natively since the Sassanian era and came into use internationally in 1935, before which the country was known to the Western world as Persia...

    ian President
    President of Iran
    The President of Iran is the highest popularly elected official in, and the head of government of the Islamic Republic of Iran; although subordinate to the Supreme Leader of Iran, who functions as the country's head of state...

     Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Ahmadinejad's views about the Holocaust are wrong and constitute "falsified history", and that the Holocaust really happened.

External links

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