As Europe and some other parts of the world commemorated International Holocaust Remembrance Day on Wednesday, Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei uploaded a video to his official website claiming that the Holocaust never happened.
The release of the new video comes on the heels of Iranian President Hassan Rouhani's official visit to Italy and France to drum up trade and diplomatic links after his country signed a historic deal to limit its nuclear ambitions.
The video titled "Are the Dark Ages Over'' shows a montage of images of slain and injured Palestinian children during the Nazi regime, including one of Adolf Hitler. It features images of Holocaust deniers Roger Garaudy, Robert Faurisson, and David Irving, the Telegraph reported.
Khamenei, who is presumed to be the narrator in the video, questioned the historically accepted account of genocide against the Jews and condemned the nations of the world for offering support to Israel, according to reports.
"No one in European countries dares to speak about the Holocaust, while it is not clear whether the core of the matter is reality or not... Even if it is reality, it is not clear how it happened. Speaking about the Holocaust and expressing doubts about it is considered to be a great sin. If someone does this, they stop, arrest, imprison and sue him. This is why they claim to be supporters of freedom."
He then called on the "dear people of Iran" to "stand up against the ignorance" of the West, the report said.
During an address in 2014, Khamenei said: "The Holocaust is an event whose reality is uncertain and if it has happened, it's uncertain how it has happened."
Iran's Supreme Leader also condemned the Western powers headed by the U.S. for supporting the "fake Zionist regime."
The International Remembrance Day was marked with public vigils, numerous newspaper columns and political speeches across Europe on Wednesday. In America, President Barack Obama addressed the Righteous Among Nations ceremony at the Israeli embassy in Washington, according to reports.
Wednesday was also the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenauby, a Nazi death camp in German-occupied Poland where more than one million people, majority of them Jews, were killed during World War .II. The former extermination camp has now become the world's biggest Jewish cemetery.
Between 1941 and 1945, the Nazis attempted to annihilate all of Europe's Jews. In one of the largest genocides in history, approximately six million Jews were killed by Hitler's Nazi regime and its collaborators.
