Dr. Ari Babaknia, a Jewish Iranian-born doctor who authored the first history books about the Holocaust in Farsi visited ADL Headquarters on May 1st to discuss his work.

Dr. Babaknia spent 15 years researching his 4 volume work in a critical effort to educate Farsi speakers – particularly in Iran – about the Holocaust and other genocides of the last 100 years. “There are about 120 million people in the world who speak Farsi, but there has never been a book written in their mother language about the Holocaust,” he said.

According to Dr. Babaknia, he has been welcomed by Jewish audiences as well as Muslim ones because he approaches the Holocaust as a universalist tragedy not only for Jews, but rather as a tragedy “for all humans.”

Dr. Babaknia spoke about his vision, “to restore faith in humanity and is dedicated to raise awareness about human suffering and develop in the next generations the ability to be more loving, tolerant, and compassionate towards each other regardless of the differences.”