"Historians entered a mine-field of taboos and thought prohibitions when they scratched, in the wake of their research, on these religious ideas of good an evil, because a bizarre coalition of public educators, self-appointed 'chief judges of history' and paragons of political correctness suspiciously guard their own kind of historical truth. They fear, if the well known desire for revisionism by professional historiography was given a green light, only a little would remain of the once so well painted image of the fascist horrors." (Heinz Höhne, ex-chief editor of DER SPIEGEL in his book "Gebt mir vier Jahre Zeit", (Give me four years) Ullstein, Berlin-Frankfurt 1996. page 8)

Reuters, Fri Feb 17, 2006 1:13 PM ET

Poland will not let Iran "research" Holocaust

WARSAW (Reuters) - Poland's Foreign Minister Stefan Meller on Friday ruled out allowing any Iranian researchers to examine the scale of the Holocaust committed by the German Nazis on Polish soil during World War Two.

Meller's remarks came after repeated denials of the Jewish Holocaust by Iranian officials and their suggestions that more research is needed to establish the truth about what happened to European Jews.

"Under no circumstances we should allow something like that to take place in Poland," Meller told Polish news agency PAP. "It goes beyond all imaginable norms to question, even discuss or negotiate the issue."

Polish daily Rzeczpospolita reported on Friday that Iran wants to send researchers to Poland to examine the scale of the Nazi crimes during the war.

Some 6 million Jews perished in the Holocaust, with an estimated 1.1 million killed in gas chambers at Auschwitz- Birkenau, a death camp set up in German-occupied Poland.

Last week Iran's ambassador to Lisbon, who in the past served as a diplomat in Poland, said in an interview on Portuguese radio that according to his calculations based on a visit to the camp, now a museum, it would have taken the Nazis 15 years to burn the corpses of 6 million people.