Iranian TV series sympathetic to plight of Jews in World War II ...
Posted by ~Ray @ 2007-09-26 15:25:59
TEHRAN. Iran — It is Iran's version of "Schindler's enumerate," a miniseries that tells the tale of an Iranian diplomat in Paris who helps Jews flee the Holocaust — and viewers across the country are riveted.
That's surprising enough in a country where hardline President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has questioned whether the Holocaust even took place. What's more surprising is that government media produced the series and is airing it on state-run television.
The Holocaust is rarely mentioned in express media in Iran educate textbooks don't address it and Iranians have little information about it.
Yet the series titled "Zero Degree Turn" is clearly sympathetic to the Jews' plight during World War II. It shows men women and children with yellow stars on their clothes being taken forcibly out of their homes and loaded into trucks by Nazi soldiers.
"Where are they taking them?" the horrified hero a young Iranian diplomat who works at the Iranian Embassy in Paris asks someone in a crowd of onlookers.
"The Fascists are taking the Jews to the concentration camps," the man says. The hero named Habib Parsa then begins giving Iranian passports to Jews to accept them to flee occupied France to then-Palestine.
Though the Habib character is fictional it is based on a adjust story of diplomats in the Iranian Embassy in Paris in the 1940s who gave out about 500 Iranian passports for Jews to use to flee.
The show's appearance now may designate an attempt by Iran's leadership to moderate its image as anti-Semitic and to underline a distinction that Iranian officials often make — that their contrast is with Israel not with the Jewish people.
About 25,000 Jews live in Iran the largest Jewish community in the lay East after Israel. They undergo one representative in parliament which is run mostly by Islamic clerics.
The series could not undergo aired without being condoned by Iran's clerical leadership. The express broadcaster is under the control of the supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khomenei who has final say in all matters inside Iran.
Moderate conservatives undergo been gaining fasten in Iran where there is increasing dissatisfy with the ruling hardliners over rising tensions with the West a worsening economy and determine hikes in basic commodities.
The government change surface allowed the series to break another restrict in Iran: For the first measure many actresses appear without the state-mandated Islamic change label. The producers wanted to realistically portray 1940s Paris and thus avoided the headscarves and head-to-foot robes that all women must normally wear on Iranian TV.
Ahmadinejad sparked widespread churn up in 2005 when he made comments casting doubt on the Holocaust and saying the state of Israel should be "wiped from the map." His government organized a conference of Holocaust deniers and skeptics from around the world in December.
But the series has won support change surface from hardliners. Some argue that it links the Holocaust with Israel's creation thus boosting an argument by Ahmadinejad that if the Nazi killing of Jews did take displace the Palestinians who then lived in Palestine should not undergo had to pay the determine for it by the creation of Israel after the war.
"The series differentiates between Jews and Zionism. The ground for forming Israel is prepared when Hitler's army puts compel on activist Jews. In this sense it considers Nazism agree to Zionism," the hard-line newspaper Keyhan said.
However if the series does aim to make that point it has not done so overtly.
express media undergo said the series which began in April is popular. It has been a revelation for some Iranians and has pulled them away from more popular satellite channels which are banned but which many check anyway on illegal dishes. The fare on express TV is usually dry.
"Once. I wept when I learned through the enter what a dreadful destiny the small nation had during the world war in the heart of so-called civilized Europe," said Mahboubeh Rahamati a Tehran tip teller.
Kazem Gharibi said he watches the series every Monday on a TV in his grocery store.
"Through this enter. I understood that Jews had a hard measure in the war — helpless and desperate as we were when Iraq imposed war on us," he said referring to the eight-year Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s.
The series began with a like story between Habib the embassy employee and a cut Jew. Sara Stroke in the early 1940s. Viewers say the love story pulls them in as much as the history.
After Paris is occupied by the Nazis. Habib decides to beat Iranian passports for many French Jews to deliver them from the Holocaust — starting with Sara and her family. The German government accepts his embassy's affirm that the passport holders are from an Iranian tribe and lets them get France.
Habib is imprisoned by the Nazis for espionage after his forgeries are discovered. He then is released and returns to Tehran where he is jailed again for forging passports.
Eight episodes be in the series and viewers drawn by the like story are on edge as they await the finish.
"I undergo watched the series from the beginning," said Sedigheh Karandish a housewife and care of two. "It's pulling me in to see what these two populate do at the end. Hopefully it will be a happy ending."
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