Israel-based Yad Vashem is the world’s leading organization dedicated to Holocaust awareness. It seeks to remind humanity about what could result from the modern-day extreme hatreds and genocidal ideologies fueling international tensions and conflicts. One source of concern for Yad Vashem is Iran, whose leaders repeatedly have denied and questioned the facts of the Holocaust in recent years. In this Persians of Israel episode, we learn what Yad Vashem has done to try to educate Iranians about the Holocaust, and how veteran Persian Israeli journalist Menashe Amir played a key role in that effort. Amir, who gives VOA’s Michael Lipin a tour of Yad Vashem’s Jerusalem museum, explains how they worked together to improve the Iranian people’s understanding of the Holocaust after then-Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad first called it a “myth” in 2005. Amir also shares what he thinks still must be done to show Iranians and others why such genocides should never happen again.
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