Auschwitz-Birkenau — Death camps in Poland help keep Holocaust history alive

OSWIECIM, Poland — Marcin Szalko was in his first year as a tour director at the Auschwitz concentration camp when Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad called the Holocaust a "myth" wrongly used to justify Israel's existence.

But the Iranian isn't the first to make that claim. With recent history as a guide, he won't be the last. Szalko just shrugs when asked if he thinks Ahmadinejad's attack has any traction.

Not many of the 2,000 daily visitors to the memorial at Auschwitz and Auschwitz II at Birkenau come from the Middle East, but those who do haven't brought Ahmadinejad's claim with them.

"I had visitors from Iran just a few weeks ago," Szalko said. "They do not believe their president. They did not question that the Holocaust happened."

Szalko acknowledges there are people who believe the wood, brick, concrete and barbed-wire remains of the expansive Auschwitz complex are purely a work of propaganda. But they either don't visit the memorial at Auschwitz or else they keep their opinions to themselves. "I have never had anybody say this was not real. I do not know of anybody (other guides) who has."

Ahmadinejad's assault was in the context of an ongoing argument about the legitimacy of the Jewish state in Israel. Ahmadinejad calls the Israeli state the foundation for a holocaust against Palestinians. Reaction continued in the United Nations, where the General Assembly adopted a resolution condemning the denial of the Holocaust. Only Iran rejected the resolution, calling it a "hypocritical political exercise."

A group of Jewish students visiting Auschwitz the week I was there filed past haunting exhibits in the camp's barracks along with many other visitors. None wanted to vocalize to an outsider their feelings about the camp or those who deny what happened there.

Szalko knows the history of Auschwitz and Birkenau very well and can answer almost any question without hesitation. One that did make him pause was an inquiry about his decision to work there as a tour guide.

His hesitation did not appear to be for lack of an answer, rather lack of a rehearsed way of condensing three generations of family history that preceded his job as a guide.