Fighting Denial: Yad Vashem Launches Farsi Site

The homepage of Yad Vashem's Farsi site

Yad Vashem, the Jewish people's memorial to the Shoah in Jerusalem, recently launched a Farsi-language site with information about the Holocaust. Since it went online about two weeks ago, more than 20,000 people have accessed the site, including 6,000 from Iran. This is equivalent to the number of people who access the English-language site every year (Ha'aretz).

The Farsi site contains a history of the Holocaust as you might see it at the Yad Vashem museum, beginning in the late 19th century and including information about such events as the 1881 and 1905 anti-Jewish pogroms in Russia (see the first page). It covers the period of Hitler's rise to power and has a detailed section on such markers as the Nuremberg Laws. From there, it proceeds via the appeasement of the 1930s to the outbreak of World War Two, the literal ghettoization of the Jews in Poland, the murders of the Einsatzgruppen during the invasion of the USSR, the Wannsee Conference, and the extermination camps. The whole effort strikes me as a great response to appeal directly to Iranians, many of whom in any case believe that Ahmadinejad's negationist games are not only damaging to Iran's reputation but also morally reprehensible.

I would greatly appreciate hearing some reviews from those of you who read Farsi!

I am sure something like this has been attempted before, but perhaps it is worth another try to launch a similar site on the Armenian Genocide in Turkish.

State-Sponsored Genocide Denial: A Growing Market

"Let the games begin" (Tehran, Iran)

Iran is quickly consolidating its leading role in the market of state-sponsored genocide denial. Yesterday, the Islamic Republic opened an international conference in Tehran to "discuss the Holocaust away from Western taboos." Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has made several statements denying the genocide of 6 million Jews during WWII. Now, he has invited 67 scholars, including such luminaries as David Duke, formerly of the Ku Klax Klan, and Robert Faurisson to "re-examine" this issue. The dominant theme of the conference is that the Jews conspired to create the myth of the Holocaust in order to seize Palestine and create their own state. It's a message that still appeals to many people, especially in the Muslim world. For coverage, see Al Jazeera (quite good actually) and the New York Times. The lead sentence of the Turkish daily Hurriyet is a quotation from Ahmadinejad, "Yahudi soykırımı bir mitostur," [The Jewish genocide is a myth].

Some of our readers might be confused by images such as these, which have appeared in the media:


What are these Jews doing hugging Ahmadinejad? The individuals in question belong to an ultra-Orthodox sect that is so fervently anti-Zionist that it sends representatives to any cause that it perceives as injurious to the state of Israel. Most ultra-Orthodox Jews, including those who live in Israel and depend on the state for its benefits, believe that the creation of a secular state before the coming of the Messiah was a sin. A relatively small number of them believe that they ought to actively support Israel's enemies to reverse this historical transgression.

Iranian President Ahmadinejad Continues Denial of Holocaust

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in China (Reuters)

After a meeting with the president of China, Ahmadinejad called for an "impartial" investigation of the Holocaust, AP reports. His rationale:

An event that has influenced so many diplomatic and political equations of the world needs to be investigated and researched by impartial and independent groups.

Many in the West will dismiss this as yet another manifestation of the Iranian president's lunacy. But there are plenty of people across the globe who are only too willing to believe the implict claims that 1) the Holocaust has been concocted by Jewish or pro-Jewish groups, and that 2) that "the Jews" have used this "myth" to advance certain political claims.