Expatica news

Germans should stop feeling guilty: Ahmadinejad

27 April 2006

TEHRAN – Iranian President Mahmud Ahmadinejad declared Thursday that it was time for Germans to stop feeling guilty for “crimes” of Nazi Germany more than 60 years ago.

In a speech in Zanjan, north-west Iran, carried live on state television, Ahmadinejad did not directly mention the Holocaust, the term for the mass extermination of Jews in Europe during the Nazi German regime.

But he spoke of how “every new-born child in Germany is still regarded as being in debt to a mob of impudent and insatiable Zionists.”

The Germans should no longer permit themselves to be made to accept guilt, Ahmadenijad said. In Germany, instead of parks there were “memorial sites” which now, even in the third generation since the war, Germans are reminded of the crimes of their ancestors.

“The war has been over for more than 60 years, but when you go to Germany, you can clearly see how this civilized people must still atone for the crimes in the Second World War,” he said.

Ahmadinejad’s speech is the latest in a series of controversial remarks on the question of the Holocaust in recent months. At one point he used the term “fairy tale” to describe it and on several occasions said the Jews in Israel should go back to Europe.

DPA

Subject: German news