Portugal summons Iranian envoy over Holocaust comments

[Behind the Aegis]

Last update - 04:37 16/02/2006

By Reuters

LISBON - Iran's ambassador to Lisbon was summoned by Portugal's government on Wednesday after saying in an interview it would have taken the Nazis 15 years to burn the corpses of 6 million people.

The remarks, reflecting similar Holocaust denials by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmedinejad, were an unacceptable distortion of history, Portuguese Foreign Minister Diogo Freitas do Amaral said in a statement.

The statements "seriously offended humanity's collective conscience," the minister said.

In an interview on Tuesday with Portuguese state radio RDP, Iranian ambassador Mohammed Taheri said: "When I was ambassador in Warsaw, I visited Auschwitz and Birkenau twice and made my calculations. To incinerate 6 million people, 15 years would be necessary."

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[Texacrat]

1. Good for them

n/t

[Behind the Aegis]

2. I agree!

Good to see a response like the Portuguese one.

[genie_weenie]

3. As always the "Forgotten" Holocaust

is lost in the shuffle. I don't know if the descendants of the other 5 million killed by the Nazis should be angry, happy, perplexed, ambivalent or non-plussed...


http://www.holocaustforgotten.com/

[Colorado Blue]

4. Actually, both German Gypsies and a German Muslim group

have written to Iran, condemning his ignorance of the Holocaust.

I think they feel the same way we do - angry, hurt and bemused, and alarmed that the president of a modern nationstate could be so willfully ignorant and hateful.

Holocaust remembrance INCLUDES those other victims - and the corrolary, Holocaust denial, wants to sweep them under the rug where even their memories will be truly lost forever.

[henslee]

5. The world must never forgetTraninistria...

http://isurvived.org/Transnistria.html
Transnistria is an artificial geographic term, created in World War II, referring to the part of the Ukraine conquered by German and Romanian troops in the summer of 1941. Before the war this area had a Jewish population of 300,000. Tens of thousands of them were slaughtered by Einsatzgruppe D, and by German and Romanian forces. When Transnistria was occupied it was used for the concentration of the Jews of Bessarabia, Bukovina, and northern Moldavia who were expelled on the direct order of Ion Antonescu. The deportations began on September 15, 1941, and continued, until the fall of 1942. Most of the Jews who survived the mass killings carried out in Bessarabia and Bukovina were deported to Transnistria by the end of 1941. Also deported to Transnistria were political prisoners and Jews who had evaded the existing regulations on forced labor. The total number of deportees was apparently 150,000, although German sources put the figure at 185,000. On October 13, 1942, the Romanians called a halt to the deportations to Transnistria.

[bleedingheart]

6. the Holocaust Museum in Washington DC had an exhibit

on Mengele and the "science of race"..etc ...it was in that exhibit that I discovered the number of disabled Germans who were literally murdered for being disabled, or mentally ill.

In some regards it was the "trial runs" on the disabled that unfortunately gave the Nazis more efficient ways of murdering people...

The thing I can't forget was the posters....these posters that were done to desensitize the german populace to the deaths of the mentally ill...etc the whole premise was that the noble and strong aryans were working hard while the mentally ill were sucking all the national resources away from them...it was stomach churning to see...

[Behind the Aegis]

7. Need some clarification

You are you chastising?

As for the 'forgotten' Holocaust, every Holocaust museum I have been to includes information about all groups murdered by the Nazis. The really horrible thing, almost every Holocaust revisionist and crackpot, only attacks the Jews! It as as if the Holocaust gets to happen all over again!

[genie_weenie]

8. You are correct, most Holocaust deniers only attack the Jews

This was not a slam or chastisement on you. Just pointing out some people are under-informed concerning the levels of Nazi brutality and the other groups of people who also suffered.

[Behind the Aegis]

9. Thank you for the clarification.

It makes more sense to me now. I appreciate your response.