Kareem Abdul-Jabbar to speak on the Holocaust
Saint Petersburg Times, Florida, Feb 9: Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, former National Basketball Association player and author of six bestselling books, will be the keynote speaker at the Florida Holocaust Museum's annual dinner that will be held on Feb. 28 in Tampa, Florida. Abdul-Jabbar, a Muslim African-American, ranks as one of the most popular sportsmen in the Muslim world.
Heated exchange between French MP and Iran Parliament Speaker on Holocaust
Wall Street Journal, Feb 6: Speaking at an international security conference in Munich, Iran's parliament speaker Ali Larijani astonished many in the audience by arguing that there could "be different perspectives on the Holocaust." The remark was surprising because Iran has been careful about commenting on the Holocaust in settings such as Munich. In addition, Mr. Larijani is considered a relative moderate who has made an effort not to discuss the Holocaust here.
The comment prompted an angry challenge from French politician Pierre Lellouche, who said denying the Holocaust is a crime in France.
"In Iran, we don't have the same sensitivities," Mr. Larijani replied.
Holocaust Memorial Day marked around the world
Associated Press, Reuters, Jan 27: Survivors from the Nazi concentration camp in Auschwitz gathered today to mark the 64th anniversary of the camp's liberation, as part of ceremonies held around the world to mark International Holocaust Memorial Day.
In 2005, the United Nations General Assembly designated 27 January, the day Soviet troops liberated the largest Nazi death camp, as a day to remember the victims of the Holocaust.
Today's commemorations at Auschwitz included a wreath-laying ceremony and prayers at the foot of the camp's memorial. More than one million people, mostly Jews, lost their lives in Auschwitz, by gas chambers, forced labor, disease or starvation.
Elsewhere, Poland's President Horst Koehler addressed the German parliament, while a ceremony was held at the former Sachsenhausen concentration camp outside Berlin.
The Czech Presidency of the European Union called on all countries to honor the memory of Holocaust victims.
"The European Union reaffirms that the Holocaust, which resulted in the murder of one third of the Jewish people, as well as the murder of countless members of other minorities, has to serve forever as a warning of the dangers of hatred, bigotry, racism as well as prejudice, and rejects any denial of the Holocaust as an historical event, either in full or in part," the statement read.
The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Navi Pillay, said that the day should serve to remind all people of the need to act quickly to combat the threat of genocide.
"The threat of genocide still remains. It is the ultimate and most terrible expression of intolerance, xenophobia and racism - and of the cynical politics that seek to exploit those darker sides of human nature," Pillay said in a statement.
At a Holocaust Remembrance Day ceremony at a synagogue in New York, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon stressed the need for the recognition of goodwill.
"We cannot turn all extremists to the path of reason and light. We can only stand against them and raise our voices in the name of common humanity," Ban said.
Iran holds Holocaust denial conference on January 27
News agencies, Jan 27: Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad told a conference in Tehran on January 27, the International Holocaust Remembrance Day, that the Holocaust was "exaggerated".
Addressing students at Sharif University of Technology in Tehran, Ahmadinejad said the Holocaust was used as a pretext to "expand the domination of the victors, particularly the US and Britain, in the international arena." He also said that "the illegitimate Zionist regime is an outcome of the Holocaust," stating that while many millions of people died in World War II, the Jews used the Holocaust as a way of massacring indigenous Arabs, evicting them, and establishing a Jewish state in Palestine.
"The filthy entity of the Zionist regime is not the sole fruit of the Holocaust," Ahmadinejad said. "Today the Zionists dominate many of the world's centers of power, wealth, and media. Unfortunately, they have ensnared many politicians and parties, and they are plundering the wealth and assets of nations in this way, depriving peoples of their freedoms and destroying their cultures and human values by spreading their nexus of corruption."