8 December 2006
The president of the Board of Deputies of British Jews, Henry Grunwald, has written to Iran's ambassador to London, Hamid Reza Nafez Arefi, to express "the depth of feeling on the part of the Jewish community at Iran's continued denial or trivialization of the Holocaust". Referring to the Tehran conference on the Holocaust next week, Grunwald said that "by hosting these conferences, Iran places itself very firmly in the camp of fanatical anti-Semites who seek to absolve the Nazis of guilt for their most heinous crimes." As an apologist of Holocaust denial, Iran had now become associated with British neo-Nazi groups.
The United Nations secretary general Annan also condemned the conference. Annan's spokesman said in New York that the outgoing UN chief "personally believes that any attempt to cast doubt on the reality of this unique and undeniable horror must be firmly resisted by all people of goodwill and of whatever faith." He stressed that Annan would deeply deplore any conference whose purpose is to question or deny the reality of the Holocaust. "Only a year ago the General Assembly passed a resolution which rejects any denial of the Holocaust as a historical event, either in full or part," the spokesman said, adding that in the same resolution, the General Assembly also designated January 27 as an annual International Day of Commemoration in memory of the victims of the Shoah.
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