Haaretz
Shvat 19,5767
The so-called Holocaust Foundation of Iran
has demanded from Austria, Germany and Poland that they submit documents
related to the massacre of Jews during the Second World War, state news
agency IRNA reported Tuesday.
The head of the Foundation,
Mohammad-Ali Ramin, told IRNA that the documents were needed for the
"fact-finding commission" to clarify the real extent of the Holocaust and
the number of Jewish victims.
The fact-finding commission was
formed during a Holocaust conference in Tehran last December, which had
been attended by controversial historians challenging the extent of the
mass killings of Jews by the German Nazi regime.
The conference had
prompted widespread international criticism, and Ramin is well-known for
his anti-Semitic standpoints and sympathies for neo-Nazi groups. He has
however no official position in Iran's political system.
Iranian
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had branded the Holocaust as a "fairy tale"
and demanded the relocation of Israel to either Europe or
America.
Ahmadinejad had not attended the Holocaust conference in
Tehran but welcomed the formation of the fact-finding commission at a
reception of the participants.
Ahmadinejad had blamed the West for
allegedly prohibiting any investigation into the Holocaust, while
accepting insults against Muslim Prophet Mohammed in form a cartoons as
part of freedom of expression.