Globe & Mail – Tuesday, December 12, 2006 Infamous Holocaust deniers pass as historians in Iran By ROBERT TAIT, TEHRAN
An international cast of established Holocaust deniers and implacable foes of Israel were given an open forum by Iran yesterday to support Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s. contention that the murder of six million Jews by the Nazis was a “myth.” The Foreign Ministry opened a two-day conference, Review of the Holocaust: Global Vision, which senior officials portrayed as scientific scholarship but which Ehud Olmert, Israel’s Prime Minister, denounced as a “sick phenomenon.” Visiting Berlin, Mr. Olmert urged Germany to sever diplomatic ties with Iran. Pretensions to scholastic objectivity were undermined by the background of some among the 67 foreign visitors from 30 countries, including Britain. They included David Duke, a former imperial wizard of the Ku Klux Klan; Robert Faurisson, a French lecturer stripped of his academic tenure for his anti- Holocaust opinions; and Michele Renouf, a London-based associate of British author David Irving. Mr. Irving is currently serving a jail sentence for Holocaust denial in Austria.
A group of radical anti-Zionist rabbis, Jews United Against Israel, who oppose a Jewish state on religious grounds, were given a prominent role. Among them was Rabbi Ahron Cohen, a retired former lecturer at the Jewish religious college in Hitchin, Hertfordshire. Rabbi Cohen acknowledged that the Holocaust had happened but said he saw nothing anti-Semitic in Mr. Ahmadinejad’s comments. Iran’s Foreign Minister, Manouchehr Mottaki, insisted the event was necessary to counter an alleged lack of free speech in the West about the Holocaust, which Iranian officials argue is used to justify Israel’s oppression of the Palestinians. “Today people who claim to be against Nazism have a record of colonialism and racism,” he said. “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.” However, exhibitions on the conference’s fringes conveyed a different message. A series of posters carried the words “myth” and “truth” juxtaposed. Under “myth” were widely accepted verifies of the Holocaust while under the “truth” label were opposing contentions. One poster, simply headlined “truth,” carried photos of Mt Irving and Ernst Zundel, a prominent German neo-Nazi also now in jail. Two of Mr. Irving’s books, Hitler’s War and Nuremberg: The Last Battle, were displayed along with several other Holocaust revisionist works. There were no books by orthodox historians on the Nazi era. A video referred to the “supposed gas chambers” and the “alleged final solution.” A series of photos showed British soldiers “forcing” German prisoners to remove corpses from a mass grave. The caption suggested that the British were responsible for the deaths. Another picture, purportedly of Dachau concentration camp, showed a smiling, well-fed group of inmates. Few visitors were apologetic. Mr. Duke praised the event as an exercise in free speech. “It’s a shame that Iran, a country we often call oppressive, has to give this opportunity for free speech,” he said. “I think Israel is a terrorist state. It is the number one terrorist state in the world.” Ms. Renouf said “terrible things’ had happened to the Jews during the Second World War but claimed their own leaders had brought it upon them. Moshe Ayre Friedman, an Aus trian rabbi, argued that the figure o six million Jewish dead had com from a prophecy by Theodor Herzl, founder of modern Zionism long before the Second World War He said recent research suggested the true figure was about one million. But Maurice Motamed, han’s sole Jewish MP, labelled the gathering a “huge insult.” In Britain, Stephen Smith, chair man of the Holocaust Memoria Day mist, said the conference contrasted with a high awareness of the Holocaust among young Britons.	Who’s attending? • Robert Faurisson, a retired French lecturer stripped of his academic tenure for his anti-Holocaust opinions. He has been convicted five times in France for denying crimes against humanity, most recently last month, when he was fined for denying in an Interview with Iranian TV that the Nazis meant to exterminate Jews. • German-born Australian Fedrick Toeben, who was jailed in Germany in 1999 for questioning the Holocaust. He maintains the existence of gas chambers is an “outright lie” and brought with him a model of the Trebllnka extermination camp to support his presentation called The Holocaust; A Murder Weapon. • French writer Georges Thiel has been convicted in France for spreading denial theories about the mass extermination of Jews. He said the Holocaust was “an enormous lie. “Jewish people have been persecuted, that is true, they have been deported, that is true,” he said In Tehran, “but there was no machinery of murder in any camp - no gas chambers.” Michael Renouf, a London- based associate of the British author David Irving, who is currently serving a jail sentence for Holocaust denial In Austria. • Former Louisiana state representative and Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke ran unsuccessfully for U.S. president and the U.S. Congress. He spent a year in federal prison after pleadingguilty In 2002 to bilking his supporters and cheating on his taxes. • Ahron Cohen, is a retired former lecturer at a British Jewish religious college. He attended with another rabbi and four others from Europe and the United States who are members of Jews United Against Zionism, a group that says the Holocaust should not have been a reason for the founding of Israel. ‘We came here to put the Orthodox Jewish viewpoint,” Mr. Cohen said. “We certainly say there was a Holocaust …But in no way can it be used as a justification for perpetrating unjust acts against the Palestinians.” Reuters, AFP

Guardian News Service

THE GLOBE AND MAIL
TUESDAY, DECEMBER 12, 2006