Holocaust Documentary To Show in Iran

By Nathan Burstein March 1, 2011

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad may be a vile Holocaust denier, but that won’t stop some of his countrymen from learning about the genocide in their own language.

The Aladdin Project, a Paris-based organization devoted to co-existence and education, has announced that the landmark Holocaust documentary “Shoah” will be beamed into Iran next Monday via satellite. The film will be translated and subtitled into Farsi for the broadcast, and will be followed by similar Turkish- and Arabic-language airings elsewhere in the Middle East. The broadcasts “will allow wider audiences to be acquainted with the history of the Holocaust in their own languages,” Aladdin Project officials said in a statement.

Launched in 2009, the Aladdin Project seeks to strengthen Jewish-Muslim relations through education. Earlier projects have highlighted aid offered to Jews by Muslims during the Holocaust, as well as Farsi and Arabic translations of Anne Frank’s diary and Primo Levi’s “Survival in Auschwitz.”

Partners in the “Shoah” project include UNESCO, the UN’s cultural wing, as well as the French Ministry of Culture, the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany and the French Foundation for the Memory of the Shoah.

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