Turkey / 27-01-2012
Turkish TV airs Holocaust documentary
ANKARA, Turkey — An epic French documentary about the mass murder of Jews under the German Nazi regime has appeared on Turkish television to mark international Holocaust Remembrance Day — the first time the film has been aired on public television in a majority-Muslim country.
State television TRT’s documentary channel showed the first episode of filmmaker Claude Lanzmann’s “Shoah” late Thursday — the eve of the day of remembrance of the victims of the Holocaust.
The film has been subtitled into Arabic, Farsi and Turkish by the Paris-based Aladdin Project as part of its campaign to promote understanding between Jews and Muslims and to fight Holocaust denial.
“Shoah,” the Hebrew word for Holocaust, includes testimony from concentration camp survivors and employees about the slaughter of millions of Jews in Europe by the Nazis during World War II. Lanzmann worked for 11 years on the film, which was released in 1985.
Last year, a Los Angeles-based Farsi satellite channel broadcast the 9-plus-hour documentary in Iran, where President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has questioned historical accounts of the Holocaust and called for Israel’s destruction.
The film is not the first Holocaust film to be shown on television in Turkey, a secular country that is seeking membership in the European Union. Turkey also has its own Holocaust film: “The Turkish Passport,” which was released last year and tells the true story of Turkish diplomats who saved thousands of Jews by issuing them Turkish passports.
“Shoah” has also been shown to a limited audience at a Turkish film festival.
Nevertheless, it was the first showing of “Shoah” on a public television channel in a Muslim country. The director said he hoped more Muslim countries would follow suit.
“It is a historical event,” Lanzmann, 87, said in a telephone interview with The Associated Press from his home in Paris. “It is extremely important that it is being shown in a Muslim country.”
“The Turks are engaged in a pioneering work and I am sure it (the showing) will be followed by other Muslim countries,” he said.
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Extremists in some Muslim countries deny that the Holocaust ever happened, accusing Jews of inventing it in an attempt to gain sympathy and advance interests. In Iran, Ahmadinejad has frequently questioned whether the Holocaust was a true historical fact, arguing that it was used by Jews to trick the West into backing the creation of Israel.
