BAGHDAD (AFP)---French Nazi hunter Serge Klarsfeld on Monday urged Muslims and Jews to learn about their mutual suffering as a way to bring them closer, after a series of Holocaust conferences mostly in Arab states.
"We must spread knowledge about works showing the common ties between Jews and Muslims, because Muslims also suffered from colonialism and humiliation,"
he said during a conference at the residence of France's ambassador to Baghdad.
Klarsfeld's tour also took in Tunis, Cairo, Amman, Istanbul, Rabat, Jerusalem and Nazareth in northern Israel as part of a project called Aladdin sponsored by the United Nations cultural organisation UNESCO and which aims at combating negationism in Arab and Muslim countries.
"The question remains as to know how this genocide could have taken place and how the Israelis can act in the manner in which they act?" said Klarsfeld.
"We must combat revisionism but I understand that those who have lived under English and French colonialism would also want to speak of their suffering and of those who suffer Israel's presence on what they consider their land."
Iraqi Science and Technology Minister Raid Jahid Fahmi said that "any person committed to human rights cannot but condemn the crimes of the Nazis...
"It must be the same principles which push us to condemn the Holocaust and to reject injustice, especially those suffered by the Palestinians, even if they are not of the same nature."