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| Yad Vashem slams Iran's Holocaust conference
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The Yad Vashem’s Hall of Remembrance in Jerusalem
Photo: AFP Copyright 2006
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JERUSALEM (EJP)--- Israel’s Holocaust memorial, Yad Vashem has condemned a conference which opened in Iran on Monday that will allow researchers to question the mass slaughter of Jews during World War II.
"Yad Vashem is following with increasing concern Iran’s continued Holocaust denial, and particularly its latest attempt to paint its extremist agenda with a scholarly brush," the museum said in a statement.
"The Iranian government’ pseudo-academic conference, ’Review of the Holocaust: Global Vision’, is an effort to mainstream Holocaust denial and must be unequivocally rejected," it said.
Iran says that nothing will be taboo at the conference, which will be attended by some 60 "researchers" from foreign countries including Britain and the United States as well as by Iranians.
No need to oppose
At the start of the conference Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki told delegates he believed 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.
"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
Iran’s fiercely anti-Israeli President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has repeatedly questioned the veracity of the Holocaust, at one point describing the slaughter of six million Jews in World War II as a myth and casting doubt on the scale of the killings.
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, including gays and disabled people.
In several European countries, including Germany and Austria, it is a crime to deny the Holocaust.
Counter conference
As a reaction to the Iranian conference, it was announced that Yad Vashem will hold a symposium with the participation of the diplomatic corps entitled “Holocaust Denial: Paving the Way to Genocide”
The symposium will be chaired by Professor David Bankier, Head of the International Institute for Holocaust Studies. Yad Vashem Chairman of the Directorate Avner Shalev will open the session, and Prof. Yehuda Bauer, Academic Advisor to Yad Vashem, Yigal Carmon, President, MEMRI (Middle East Media Research Institute), and Holocaust survivor Rita Weiss, many of whose relatives were killed in the Holocaust, will speak”
Next month the United Nations, and many countries in the world, will mark International Holocaust Remembrance Day, recognizing the importance of Holocaust remembrance as a safeguard against the breakdown of the basic human values that underpin our civilization.
“The dismissal of the veracity of the Holocaust and its legacy represents a clear rejection of those values,” Yad Vashem said.
“Memory of the Holocaust helps serve as a warning and a hindrance to those who might consider or advocate genocide. Those who threaten genocide therefore seek to deny the Holocaust in order to remove this obstacle from their path. The international community must act to prevent genocidal intentions from becoming genocidal capabilities.”
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