Holy See tells Iran Holocaust was immense tragedy, a warning for the future
Vatican City (AsiaNews) – The Vatican has issued a statement deploring the claims made by the Iranian government denying the Holocaust. In a communiqué released the Vatican Press Office about the Holocaust conference in Tehran, the Holy See reiterated its position already laid out in a document of the Commission for Religious Relations with the Jews titled ‘We Remember: A Reflection on the Shoah’.”
The statement said that “last century saw an attempt to exterminate the Jewish people with millions of Jews murdered of every age and social status for the only reason that they belonged to the same people. The Holocaust was an immense tragedy before which we cannot remain indifferent. With profound respect and great compassion the Church sympathises with the Jewish people and its experience during the Second World War. The memory of those horrible events must remain as a warning for people’s consciences in order to end conflict, respect the legitimate rights of all peoples, urge people towards peace in truth and justice. Pope John Paul II asserted this position, among other places, at Yad Vashem in Jerusalem on March 23, 2000. His Holiness Benedict XVI reaffirmed it during his visit to the Auschwitz extermination camp on may 28, 2006”.
Today’s Vatican statement follows protests and condemnation by several European governments as well as the United States and Israel. For the Israeli government, Iran’s initiatives are shameful, in complete contradiction with universally shared history and threaten another genocide.
Fr David Jaeger, a Jew, an Israeli and a Franciscan father, told AsiaNews that “statements coming from there [Iran] about the Holocaust profound insult me as a Jew, as a Catholic and above all as human being. I hope no one will exploit the Holocaust and my people any more and that everyone, with no exception, will hold an attitude of respect coupled with the determination of not allowing such outrages against God and humanity from taking place again.”
The international conference held in Tehran itself is but a thinly veiled attempt to undermine Israel’s raison d’être. In fact, “[i]f the official version of the Holocaust is thrown into doubt, then the identity and nature of Israel will be thrown into doubt,” Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki said in his opening address to the Conference.
Whether to deny or belittle the Holocaust or say that Palestinians should not pay for the persecution of the Jews, the two-day meeting has drawn the Who’s Who of Holocaust deniers as well as some anti-Zionist ultra-Orthodox Jews and Iranian “experts”.
Among the so-called experts, there is Robert Faurisson, a former literature profession sentenced several times for denying that Jews were exterminated, who yesterday repeated his claim that the Holocaust was a myth “as President Ahmadinejad said”.
Other so-called scholars are Fredrick Töben, sentenced in Germany for inciting racial hatred, and the American David Duke, a former Imperial Wizard of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan. Britain’s David Irving could not come because he is currently serving time in an Austrian jail, but his book, ‘Hitler's War’, is on sale in the convention centre’s bookstore surrounded by posters that refer to the Holocaust Myth, that deny crematoria ever existed or criticise the movie ‘Schindler's list’.
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