A 91-year-old Nazi death camp survivor has asked Iran’s Holocaust-denying president to join her at a mass grave where 3,000 victims were shot dead.
Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi caused outrage when he told a US TV news show that the genocide needed further “research”.
Now survivor Rae Goldfarb – who was born to a family of Polish Jews in what is now Belarus – told Iranwire: “I would like to take him to my town, and have him open up the grave where 3,000 people were shot dead.”
(Newsflash)
The challenge came after Iran President Ebrahim Raisi was asked by CBS’s 60 Minutes journalist Lesley Stahl: “Do you believe the Holocaust happened? That 6 million Jews were slaughtered?”
Raisi replied: “Look… Historical events should be investigated by researchers and historians.
“There are some signs that it happened. If so, they should allow it to be investigated and researched.”
Raisi’s comments sparked outrage and drew condemnation from the White House and from Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial in Israel.
Goldfarb told Iranwire how her father and younger brother were betrayed to the Nazis and murdered.
(Newsflash)
Goldfarb now volunteers with the US Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC.
She said: “I remember sitting in hiding, in a very crowded space, while people were dragged from our house and taken to their death. I remember living with the farmer. Neighbours told the Germans about Shlomo for 10 kilos of sugar.
“They bartered his life for that. I remember the women that sent my mother and I running because she knew I would be taken away next. All I can say is anybody who denies the Holocaust should have gone through something like that.”
State-sponsored antisemitism and Holocaust denial has been widespread in Iran since the 1979 Islamic Revolution.
It also features in the media and in school textbooks, according to Iranwire.
(@holocaustmuseum/Newsflash)
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Story By: Joseph Golder, Sub-Editor: Marija Stojkoska, Agency: Newsflash
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