Breitbart barking at the moon

[zgrams at zgrams.zundelsite.org]

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Title:  Breitbart barking at the moon



Iran defiant as anger mounts over Holocaust forum /  Dec 12, 2006

Iran has pressed on with a controversial Holocaust conference as 
international outrage mounted over its hosting of "revisionist" 
historians who cast doubt on the mass slaughter of Jews in World War 
II.

British Prime Minister Tony Blair on Tuesday slammed the conference 
as "shocking beyond belief", a sentiment echoed by his Israeli 
counterpart Ehud Olmert and German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

A host of Western "revisionists" who doubt the slaughter of six 
million Jews in World War II took place, including a former Ku Klux 
Klan leader and a Frenchman given a suspended jail term in October, 
have taken part.

Iran said that the aim of the conference was to find answers to 
questions about the Holocaust from President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who 
has described it as a "myth" and cast doubt on the scale of the 
slaughter.

Papers delivered Tuesday 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".

"I think it is such a symbol of sectarianism and hatred towards 
people of another religion, I find it just unbelievable," said Blair. 
"I found that this conference that they had questioning the Holocaust 
is shocking beyond belief.

"If you're going to 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, then what further evidence do you need to have that 
this regime is extreme?" said Blair.

Olmert led a chorus of angry condemnation from the Jewish state over 
the two-day meeting which started on Monday.

"The conference in Iran was sickening and shows the depths of the 
hatred," Olmert said, calling on the world "to disassociate itself 
from Iran and all the participants of the conference".

German Chancellor Angela Merkel condemned "in the strongest terms" 
dismissals of the Holocaust by the "revisionist" historians. In its 
reaction to the conference, the Vatican described the Holocaust as an 
"appalling tragedy to which one cannot remain indifferent."

Some of the most notorious Western figures who have downplayed the 
scale of the Holocaust have been attending the event, including 
French professor Robert Faurisson and German-born Australian Fredrick 
Toeben.

The conference wrapped up in the early afternoon and all of the 
participants, who have showered the Iranian president with praise 
throughout the meeting, were bussed away for a private meeting with 
Ahmadinejad.

In Tehran, an assistant of Toeben, who maintains the existence of gas 
chambers is an "outright lie", tried to show his claim using a model 
of the Treblinka extermination camp the researcher had brought to the 
conference.

"There is no scientific proof to show that this place was an 
extermination camp. All that exists are the words of some people," 
said Richard Krege.

He claimed that only 5,000 people died in the camp, of disease. Most 
historians believe that at least 800,000 prisoners were murdered in 
the camp.

The conference is the latest brush with controversy for the Islamic 
republic, which is already facing UN sanctions for failing to agree 
to halt sensitive nuclear work.

Historians specialising in 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.

It is a crime to deny the Holocaust in a dozen European countries, 
including Germany and Austria.

Mainstream scholars of the Holocaust meanwhile held a counter 
gathering in Berlin on Monday to condemn the conference, entitled 
"Study of the Holocaust: A Global Perspective".

US academic Raul Hilberg, the author of "Destruction of the European 
Jews", which is widely considered one of the standard texts on the 
Holocaust, said he wanted to make "a statement" by attending the 
Berlin conference.

The European Jewish Congress "condemned in the strongest terms" the 
"negationist and revisionist" conference in Iran attended by Western 
figures it described as "pseudo-historians and intellectuals".

http://www.breitbart.com/news/2006/12/12/061212142536.rhu8rs3p.html

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