Tehran to Hold Holocaust Conference in October

Deutsche Presse-Agentur, Monsters & Critics:

Iran is to hold its controversial proposed conference on the Holocaust in October of this year, Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamid-Reza Assefi said Sunday.

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad provoked international outrage last year by calling for the eradication of Israel, branding the Holocaust a 'fairy tale' and demanding a relocation of Israel to Europe or the United States.

Following international protests, Tehran decided to hold a conference discussing what it termed 'clarification of the real dimensions of the Holocaust.'

The conference was supposed to be held in spring this year but observers say that it was delayed in order to avoid possible problems for the Iranian national football team before and during the World Cup in Germany.

Several Muslim as well as Western scholars, reportedly also German neo-Nazis, are among those to attend the conference. READ MORE

The Holocaust is the term generally applied to the mass extermination of six million Jews in Europe by Nazi Germany during World War Two (1939-1945).