Israel’s Holocaust memorial institution Yad Vashem has begun broadcasting videos about the Shoah in Farsi, in order to educate Iranians about the mass slaughter of Jews during World War II. Yad Vashem already has an Arabic channel on ‘YouTube’. The videos will highlight the atrocities of the World War II and the genocide of six million Jews to a population whose president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has publicly questioned the Holocaust. In 2005, he told thousands of Iranian citizens at a rally that Jews had "created a myth today that they call the massacre of Jews and they consider it a principle above God, religions and the prophets."
Yad Vashem Chairman Avner Shalev said: “One of our primary goals is to make credible information about the Holocaust accessible to as wide an audience as possible. Today, when there is so much disinformation and distortion easily available online, we provide an alternative to anyone who is interested in the truth.”
Yad Vashem launched the site to coincide with Holocaust Memorial Day on Thursday when the 66th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz death camp by Soviet troops is marked world-wide. The museum is also running a ‘Facebook’ campaign, giving users who join a memorial event the name of a Holocaust victim to remember.
