Iranian website mocks Holocaust, Jews

A new Iranian website that denies and mocks the Holocaust with cartoons showing Jews as hook-nosed worms burrowing holes through a history book has provoked outrage in Israel.

The site, http://www.holocartoons.com, features caricatures including a Jew with a big nose and a black hat emblazoned with a Star of David tracing fake bodies on the ground at a concentration camp. The website design uses Nazi imagery, with the icon for flipping pages marked with a swastika.

The site opens with the “Pink Panther” theme song and a dedication to those who have been killed “under the pretext of the Holocaust.”

“The vulgar and cynical approach of the website, a combination of Holocaust denial and distortion, illustrated with anti-Semitic caricatures, further illustrates Iran’s disregard for reality and truth vis-à-vis the Holocaust, Jews and Israel,” Israel’s Holocaust memorial Yad Vashem said.

It called the site “the latest salvo emanating from Iran that denies the facts of the Holocaust and attempts to influence those who are ignorant of history.”

The semiofficial Iranian Fars news agency reported that cartoonist Maziar Bijani launched the site and said it is financed by a nongovernmental cultural foundation. The site has English, Arabic and Farsi versions.

Iranian authorities would have had to approve the creation of the new site, but not necessarily its content.

One image shows worms with black hats and big noses burrowing holes through a book labeled “The History of the World.”

Another shows an Israeli tank filling up at a Nazi gas station. One cartoon depicts a soldier with a Star of David on his helmet and a tank of Zyklon B on his back — the same chemical the Nazis used to kill Jews in gas chambers. — ap