WASHINGTON (EJP)---Retired Cuban leader has criticized Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad for denying the Holocaust and said the Iranian government would better serve the cause of peace by acknowledging the "unique" history of anti-Semitism and trying to understand why Israelis fear for their existence.

In rare interview to visiting American journalist Jeffrey Goldberg in Havana, the ailing 84-year-old castro said "the Jews have lived an existence that is much harder than ours." "There is nothing that compares to the Holocaust."

He said the Iranian government should understand the consequences of theological anti-Semitism. "This went on for maybe two thousand years," he said. "I don't think anyone has been slandered more than the Jews. I would say much more than the Muslims. They have been slandered much more than the Muslims because they are blamed and slandered for everything. No one blames the Muslims for anything."

The Iranian government should understand that the Jews "were expelled from their land, persecuted and mistreated all over the world, as the ones who killed God," Castro said.

Asked by Goldberg if he could relay the message to Ahmadinejad, who has denied the Holocaust and repeatedly called for Israel to be wiped off the map, Castro was quoted as saying: "I am saying this so you can communicate it."

During the interview, Castro described his first encounters with anti-Semitism, as a boy. "I remember when I was a boy - a long time ago - when I was five or six years old and I lived in the countryside," he said, "and I remember Good Friday. What was the atmosphere a child breathed? `Be quiet, God is dead.' God died every year between Thursday and Saturday of Holy Week, and it made a profound impression on everyone. What happened? They would say, `The Jews killed God.' They blamed the Jews for killing God! Do you realize this?"

"Well, I didn't know what a Jew was. I knew of a bird that was a called a 'Jew,' and so for me the Jews were those birds.  These birds had big noses. I don't even know why they were called that. That's what I remember. This is how ignorant the entire population was."

Goldberg, a national correspondent for American magazine The Atlantic, was invited by Castro to Havana because he recently wrote an article about the prospects of Israel launching a strike against Iran's nuclear facilities.

Commentators noted that Castro’s criticism of Iran's Holocaust denial is surprising given his iconic status among the leftist regimes in Latin American – including Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez- which have allied with the Islamic Republic.