BERLIN – Germany condemned a planned Iranian conference on the Holocaust and summoned Iran's charge d'affaires to the Foreign Ministry, saying Friday that attempts to question the Nazis' murder of Jews were "shocking and unacceptable."
The conference, scheduled for Sunday and Monday, was organized by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who has called the systematic killing of some six million Jews a "myth" and "exaggerated." Some 67 foreign researchers from 30 countries are scheduled to attend the two-day meeting.
"We condemn all past and future attempts of anyone who gives a platform to those who relativize or question the Holocaust," Foreign Ministry spokesman Jens Ploetner said.
The Iranian president has called for Israel to be "wiped off the map," and the Tehran conference appeared to be part of Ahmadinejad's public campaign against the Jewish state.
Ploetner stressed that "the German government finds all statements that question the right of Israel to exist or the Holocaust shocking and unacceptable."
Germany is hosting its own Holocaust conference in Berlin on Tuesday, which will be attended by Raul Hilberg, considered one of the leading experts on Holocaust studies who wrote the comprehensive multi-volume book, "The Destruction of European Jewry."
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