by Nazi­la Fathi
THE NEW YORK TIMES

TEHRAN, Dec. 11 — Iran held a gath­er­ing that includ­ed Holo­caust deniers, dis­cred­it­ed schol­ars and white suprema­cists from around the world on Mon­day under the guise of a con­fer­ence to “debate” the Nazi anni­hi­la­tion of six mil­lion Jews.

Among those rep­re­sent­ing the Unit­ed States was the for­mer Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke, whose pre­pared remarks, issued by the Iran­ian For­eign Min­istry, said the gas cham­bers in which mil­lions per­ished actu­al­ly did not exist.

Robert Fau­ris­son, an aca­d­e­m­ic from France, said in his speech that the Holo­caust was a myth cre­at­ed to jus­ti­fy the occu­pa­tion of Pales­tine, mean­ing the cre­ation of Israel.

That is what Iran’s pres­i­dent, Mah­moud Ahmadine­jad, has fre­quent­ly claimed, and it was Mr. Ahmadinejad’s state­ments that inspired the For­eign Min­istry to hold the con­fer­ence. The min­istry said 67 peo­ple from 30 coun­tries were par­tic­i­pat­ing in the two days of meet­ings.

In a wel­com­ing speech, Rasoul Mousavi, head of the For­eign Ministry’s Insti­tute for Polit­i­cal and Inter­na­tion­al Stud­ies, said the ses­sion would pro­vide an oppor­tu­ni­ty to dis­cuss the Holo­caust “away from West­ern taboos and the restric­tion imposed on them in Europe.” In sev­er­al Euro­pean coun­tries, denial of the Holo­caust is a crime.

An accom­pa­ny­ing exhi­bi­tion also denied the Holo­caust. One poster with three pho­tographs showed dead bod­ies and described accounts of their gassing as a myth. Signs point­ed to smil­ing pris­on­ers freed at the end of the war with the label “truth.”

New cap­tions in Per­sian on oth­er pic­tures of corpses described them as vic­tims of a typhus epi­dem­ic in Europe, not of the Nazi death machine.

Speak­ers at the con­fer­ence praised Mr. Ahmadinejad’s com­ments about the Holo­caust.

Bendikt Frings, 48, a psy­chol­o­gist from Ger­many, said he believed that Mr. Ahmadine­jad was “an hon­est, direct man.” He said he had come to the con­fer­ence to thank the pres­i­dent for what he had ini­ti­at­ed.

“We are for­bid­den to have such a con­fer­ence in Ger­many,” he said. “All my child­hood, we wait­ed for some­thing like this.”

Fred­er­ick Toben, from Aus­tralia, said Mr. Ahmadine­jad had opened an issue “which is moral­ly and intel­lec­tu­al­ly crip­pling the West­ern soci­ety.”

“Peo­ple are impris­oned in Ger­many for deny­ing the Holo­caust,” he added. Mr. Toben said that he was jailed for six months in 1999 for his ideas and that there was a court order in Ger­many to arrest him if he again spoke against the Holo­caust.

Mr. Duke’s speech argued that inven­tions about what hap­pened to Europe’s Jews were part of a plot. He said, “Depict­ing Jews as the over­whelm­ing vic­tims of the Holo­caust gave the moral high ground to the Allies as vic­tors of the war and allowed Jews to estab­lish a state on the occu­pied land of Pales­tine.”

There were also mem­bers of anti-Zion­ist ultra-Ortho­dox Jew­ish sects in atten­dance. One Jew­ish par­tic­i­pant in a long black coat and hat wore a badge say­ing: “A Jew, not a Zion­ist.”

A 2004 book by an Amer­i­can author, Michael Collins Piper, “The New Jerusalem: Zion­ist Pow­er in Amer­i­ca,” was on sale for $20.

It was not clear how the speak­ers were assem­bled. The institute’s Web site invit­ed schol­ars and researchers to sub­mit their papers in advance. The For­eign Min­istry pro­vid­ed lit­tle infor­ma­tion about the par­tic­i­pants, say­ing that it feared they would be pros­e­cut­ed by their coun­tries.

The orga­niz­ers said they planned for “both sides” to be heard, but none of the speech­es col­lect­ed in the ministry’s book or any of the exhi­bi­tions spoke of the real­i­ty of the Nazi killing. A CD with the sto­ries of 12 Holo­caust sur­vivors was said to be avail­able.

The event has sparked out­rage in the West.

Ger­many sum­moned the Iran­ian chargé d’affaires to express its anger, and the French for­eign min­is­ter, Philippe Douste-Blazy, has con­demned the con­fer­ence.

Last sum­mer, Iran cre­at­ed a con­test for car­toons about the Holo­caust in reac­tion to the con­tro­ver­sy over Dan­ish car­toons lam­poon­ing the Prophet Muham­mad.

The Iran­ian Jew­ish com­mu­ni­ty react­ed angri­ly to Mr. Ahmadinejad’s com­ments last year and said his words had spread fear among them.

“We con­sid­er the Holo­caust as a fact and a dis­grace for human­i­ty,” the head of the com­mu­ni­ty, Haround Yashayai, said Mon­day.