http://www.breitbart.com/news/2006/12/12/061212142536.rhu8rs3p.html
Iran defiant as anger mounts over Holocaust forum 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".
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