The details of the plan emerged this week in the Swiss weekly Die Weltwoche, which claimed to obtain minutes from a meeting between Micheline Calmy-Rey and Iran’s deputy foreign minister on December 21. The Iranians had just made world headlines after hosting a Holocaust denial conference in Tehran that featured neo-Nazis and ex-Klansmen, such as David Duke.
Die Weltwoche reported in the piece that Ms. Calmy-Rey said through a spokesman that she had told her Iranian interlocutor she believed the Holocaust was a historical fact.
The statement did not satisfy the New York-based Anti-Defamation League. Yesterday, its national director, Abraham Foxman, who is a survivor of the Holocaust, said the Swiss government owed his fellow survivors an apology.
"We are outraged that the Swiss government could have pitched the idea of a seminar on the Holocaust to, of all countries, Iran," he said.