And there are 4 million pages of testimony and documentation that chronicle the Holocaust.
Posted on 02/15/2006 12:34:47 PM PST by Shermy
LISBON (Reuters) - 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."
Freitas do Amaral said Taheri was told his statements and those of his government's over the Holocaust were unacceptable.
Freitas do Amaral said Iran's statements over the Holocaust, attacks on embassies in Tehran and Iran's "negative attitude" in its nuclear standoff with the International Atomic Energy Agency were threatening relations based on "mutual confidence."
Ahmedinejad has repeatedly denied that the Holocaust, the Nazis' killing of 6 million Jews during World War Two, took place. He has also called for Israel to be "wiped off the map."
More than 1.5 million people, mostly Jews, died at Auschwitz-Birkenau, a death camp set up by Nazi Germany in occupied Poland.
"When our president wants to talk about the Holocaust with historians and scientists, the whole world is against him," Taheri said, referring to plans by Ahmedinejad to organize an academic conference on the Holocaust.
"Historians need to get together to give their opinions," the envoy added.
Taheri said the publication by European newspapers of cartoons of the Prophet Mohammad, outraging many Muslims and provoking widespread protests, was an Israeli conspiracy designed to cause conflict between Muslims and Christians.
"We think that this is a conspiracy by Zionists who want to put Muslims against Christians in Europe," he said.
Iran's best-selling newspaper, Hamshahri, has responded to the Muslim outrage over published cartoons of the Prophet by organizing a competition for cartoons about the Holocaust, saying it is a test of the West's vaunted freedom of speech.
Sounds like the Iranians are looking for pointers.
Iran may soon be directly shown that it can be done in under 15 seconds.
Translates as "that was no holocaust; I'll show you what a holocaust looks like."
Yep. I just love those wonderful advances in technology, especially when it can serve such a worthwhile cause. Light 'em up!
I don't know if it would do anything but please the psychos.
I read when Ahmedinejad was elected, he recalled many of the fanatic ambassadors and replaced them with worse ones. Nukes and the Holocaust seem to be their obsession.
Just throw him out, tell him to go home and don't come back.
And there are 4 million pages of testimony and documentation that chronicle the Holocaust.
In this world today that needs to be pointed out over and over, sadly.
Not all victims were burned and there were many more camps and sites than those two the Ambassador visited, gleefully I suspect. His argument is strawman, of the diabolical quality.
OK, so now I have to by more Portuguese products. What do they make anyway?
"What do they make anyway?"
Port wine is nice.
Hot chicks........definatly hot chicks.
Portugal has a long memory with regard to Dhimmitude... Unlike Norway, which today created a law banning blasphemy.
The Portuguese won't cut Islam a lot of slack.
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