On January 27, on the anniversary of the liberation of several thousand surviving prisoners of the Auschwitz concentration camp, the world celebrates Holocaust Remembrance Day. For the first time in its history, Saudi Arabia also honored the memory of the murdered Jews and condemned the Holocaust deniers.
Mohammed Al-Isa, the former minister of justice of Saudi Arabia, now chairman of the World Muslim League, sent a letter to the Washington Holocaust Museum that described the Holocaust as "one of the worst crimes in history that shook humanity to the core" and condemned attempts to deny Nazi crimes.
"Who can, in their right mind, accept, sympathize or even belittle the scale of these heinous crimes?" - writes the head of a religious organization, funded by the royal government.
Denial of the Holocaust is a widespread phenomenon in the Arab world, where only 8% of the population know about the Holocaust and believe in the truthfulness of the stories about this tragedy. According to a survey conducted in 2014 by the Anti-Defamation League, 62% of the inhabitants of the Arab Middle East did not even hear about the Holocaust, and 63% of those who heard did not believe in the reality of this tragedy.