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Israel’s Holocaust museum launches YouTube channel in Farsi

25 January 2011 02:34 (UTC +04:00)

Baku â€“ APA. Yad Vashem, Israel’s official Holocaust memorial, museum and research facility, has launched a YouTube channel in Farsi, the primary language of Iran, APA reports quoting CNN.
This is being added to the already existing channels in English, Hebrew, Arabic, Russian and Spanish.
The Farsi YouTube channel contains a chronological description of the Holocaust, accompanied by video, photos, documents and artifacts. It also includes the "Auschwitz Album," a multimedia presentation about the infamous Nazi death camp where more than 1 million Jews were murdered during World War II.
Testimonies from Holocaust survivors are presented on the channel, several of whom attended the launching event held at Yad Vashem. The channel also features Holocaust historians speaking about contemporary anti-Semitism.
"Today, when there is so much disinformation and distortion easily available online, we provide an alternative to anyone who is interested in the truth," said Avner Shalev, chairman of Yad Vashem.
Shalev affirmed to CNN that the Farsi channel is, in part, a countermeasure against the official Holocaust denial of the Iranian regime, "and I do believe that there are those circles inside Iranian society, we know about them, who are making many efforts to get more information about the Holocaust."
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has questioned, repeatedly and publicly, whether the Holocaust actually happened. He went as far as organizing a conference in Tehran on December 11, 2006, titled the International Conference to Review the Global Vision of the Holocaust. The attendees included individuals who propagate that the Holocaust was a fabrication. Ahmadinejad himself in a speech given in June 2009 referred to the murder of six million Jews as "the great deception of the Holocaust."
Ya’acov Handeli, a survivor of Auschwitz whose testimony is included on the YouTube channel said, "Holocaust denial exists in many countries, and that is why it is important that people will see us, the Holocaust survivors, and listen to our testimony and learn about the events of the Holocaust also in Farsi."