Iran, Jews, Holocaust: Mix-It-Up

Yesterday was International Human Rights Day, the anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Today marks the opening of a regime-sponsored conference in Iran debating the Holocaust. Some of Europe's more notorious Holocaust deniers are reportedly in attendance.

It's a nice Orwellian exercise when Iranian leaders invoke scholarly free inquiry as the human right that enables them to debate the veracity of the Holocaust. This is a freedom they deny to the Iranian public on most other matters. The whole affair seems at once a joke and a menace: Do we laugh it off or earnestly express concern?

Our answer is to offer a modest suggestion for a topic the "scholars" might consider: How Iran rescued hundreds of Polish Jews (mostly children) from the Holocaust and then helped them immigrate to Palestine. The online Center for Iranian Jewish Oral History has  a brief report on these "Children of Tehran" who in 1942 were housed in a refugee tent camp in Dustan Tappeh, outside Tehran (not too far from today's conference location). In 1942, Iranian authorities not only acknowledged the Holocaust - they bravely saved over 1,000 people from Hitler's wrath. In 2006, the spirit of that noble deed has been abandoned, perhaps even inverted.

As for the status of the 20,000 Jews were remain in Iran today (the second largest community in the Middle East), check out the new documentary from Ramin Farahani, an Iranian-Dutch filmmaker whose "Jews of Iran" has recently been released. Farahani, a Muslim, spent weeks inside Iran's Jewish community, yet found most Jews too afraid to open up.

The Jews' fear of freely expressing themselves in front of the camera, and, incidentally, in front of others who may see the film, is apparent throughout the film. One scene shows an elderly Jewish woman lying in her hospital bed. She says she is alone, that her children live abroad and that there is no one to look after her. When the director asks her where they live, she answers that she believes they live in Israel, but then quickly adds: "God is my witness that I don't have their address." She later relates that they tried to take her with them when they left, "but then something happened." She refuses to elaborate and bursts into tears...

Farahani says Iranian citizens in general - and not just Jews - are unaccustomed to speaking freely about their problems. "If they're already talking, they usually censor what they say," he says. The Jews, however, are much more careful than others, he says. "They were very careful regarding every aspect of the movie. The community leaders permitted me to attend events and talk to people, but they were constantly watching over me. When I visited the Jewish youth organization in Tehran, for example, I sat with the members and tried to start a discussion about the problems they face as Jews at school or when trying to find a job, but I saw some people had decided in advance not to discuss these things. I was very disappointed."

...In the film, the only person who dares to speak directly about anti-Semitism is a girl named Farandis. Once, when she still attended public school, she left class for a drink of water, she relates. When she returned, she felt the students were looking at her strangely. Later, a friend told her that when she had stepped out, the teacher told the other students that because it was raining outside, Farandis had gotten wet and had therefore been contaminated. The teacher told them that anyone who touched her would also be infected, because the girl was now impure. As a result of this incident, Farandis transferred to a Jewish school and eventually left Iran. This, of course, made it easier for her to tell her story.

Farahani says he met other Jews who described problems, insults and discrimination at the hands of Muslims, but says they were unwilling to repeat their stories for the camera. He says he realized there was no point in pressuring them to talk.

It's hard to imagine the Iranian regime ever holding a conference to address this contemporary social discrimination. Better to corrupt the past than to face the corrupt present.

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