Holocaust cartoon show a popular flop

TEHRAN - An exhibition of cartoons about the Holocaust has proved a popular flop in Tehran three weeks after opening, despite sparking an international furore. According to gallery officials it drew audiences of fewer than 300 a day in its first week and only attracts about 50 people a day now.

Most of those approached in central Tehran said they had not heard of the exhibition and insisted the Holocaust was a historical fact. "I'm sure the Holocaust was true - I've heard all about it from newspapers and television," said a housewife from a religious family.

"I don't know why some say it didn't happen. Judaism is different from Zionism. It's a religion from God."

Several of the cartoons on display suggest that the slaughter of six million Jews in the Holocaust had been exaggerated or fabricated. Shahram Rezaei, an Iranian cartoonist, drew Nazi soldiers laying a paper chain in a mass grave, implying that they were faking the deaths. Some depictions drew heavily upon anti-semitic stereotypes of greed, ambition and mendacity.

Many other drawings accepted the horrors of the Holocaust, but said it was being used to justify Western brutality in the Middle East. An entry by Italy's Alessandro Gatto showed an Arab looking forlornly from behind prison bars, which morphed into the stripes on a concentration camp jacket. Many others did not deal with the Holocaust at all, but focussed on the suffering of Palestinians.

Thousands of foreigners have visited the exhibition's website at irancartoon.com, some of them engaging in angry debate about anti-semitism and the death of Muslims in the Middle East. A conference on the Holocaust is planned in Tehran for October, which like this exhibition is likely to garner more attention outside Iran than in the country itself.

The exhibition followed a Holocaust cartoon competition designed to show up Western double standards in freedom of speech. The angry response of Westerners to President Ahmadinejad's denial of the Holocaust this spring caught many Iranians off guard, while Danish cartoons lampooning the Prophet Mohammed provoked outrage in the Muslim world.

A Moroccan entry by Hossein Abed showed death riding a skeletal horse, clutching a pencil and sporting a Nazi armband. His cloak was made of the Danish flag. Another drawing showed an orthodox Jew pressing the face of another man into a lake labelled "freedom of expression". The Jewish figure held a placard saying "Mohammed cartoon" and the drowning man held a sign saying "Holocaust".

The reaction of Iran's Jewish community, the largest in the Middle East outside Israel, was mixed. "Iranian Jews didn't pay much attention to it because it's not really related to us," said Haroun Yashayaie, the former head of Tehran's Jewish community.

But a Jewish student said: "Everybody knows the Holocaust happened. Over the past year things have become much more difficult and this exhibition shows they do not care what we think."

The cartoons were mostly drawn by Iranians and Arabs, but included some US, European, Brazilian, Korean and Chinese entries. US cartoonist David Baldinger said on his website that he did not regret entering. "I don't really feel the need to justify to anyone my participation in the exhibition. My conscience is clear knowing my drawing in no way ridiculed the Holocaust," he wrote.

UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan condemned the exhibition when he visited Iran at the beginning of the month. He told senior Iranian officials that the Holocaust was "undeniable".

Officials said the exhibition championed freedom of speech, but yesterday closed Iran's most popular reformist newspaper for alleged offences, including a cartoon that appeared to show President Ahmadinejad as a donkey.

- INDEPENDENT