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Hitler's legacy in Tehran
87 years, four broadcasters, three continents, one sentence. First aired from Zeesen in 1939. Counted by British intelligence in 2025.
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More about the project in the video
Three minutes. Sebastian explains what this is about and why we need you.
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Support on StartnextFrom 1 euro. Secure payment via Startnext.
This is not a Jewish film and not a Persian film. Our team includes people from the Iranian diaspora, Jewish people and people of no faith at all. We are only interested in the mechanism. And the mechanism is documented: Bundesarchiv, Yad Vashem, US Holocaust Memorial Museum.
Six stations One broadcast
Every station is documented. The sources: the National Archives in Washington, the Bundesarchiv, German court rulings, and the broadcasters themselves.
1939
April 1939. A transmitter south of Berlin goes on air in Arabic, soon after in Persian and Turkish. Every evening the announcer Younis Bahri opens with the same words: 'Huna Berlin. This is Berlin.' The US embassy in Cairo has every broadcast transcribed and translated. Those transcripts are still in the National Archives in Washington. Every sentence on this page is in there.
What was being broadcast?
1942
November 1941: the Mufti of Jerusalem meets Hitler in the Reich Chancellery. From now on he speaks over Zeesen himself. July 1942, Rommel is 100 kilometres from Alexandria, and the station calls out in Arabic: 'Kill the Jews wherever you find them.' This call has no precedent in the Middle East. It comes from Berlin.
In 1945 the transmitter is blown up. And the speaker?
1946
1946: Husseini escapes from France to Cairo. King Farouk receives him. Ten years later Johann von Leers joins him, formerly of Goebbels' propaganda ministry, now at Nasser's ministry of information. He calls himself Omar Amin. Cairo's new station 'Voice of the Arabs' reaches the whole region from 1953. The staff is the same. Only the frequency is new.
And how does it get from Cairo to Tehran?
1979
The Islamic Republic turns a radio programme into state doctrine. Schoolbooks, Friday prayers, state television. December 2006: Iran’s foreign ministry hosts a conference in Tehran dedicated to denying the Holocaust. Among the guests: David Duke, former leader of the Ku Klux Klan. A ministry sends the invitations, a state pays the bill.
A broadcaster needs an audience. Where does Tehran look for a new one?
2011
December 2011: Iran launches HispanTV, state television in Spanish, beamed by satellite to Latin America. In 2013 the European satellite operator Hispasat drops the channel; in 2019 YouTube deletes every account. The broadcast continues. Its audience are Catholics in Caracas, Bogotá, Mexico City. They have never set foot in a mosque. They still believe a sentence from Berlin. That is the proof it was never about religion.
And if the sentence no longer needs religion, what does it need?
2025
A broadcaster on the doorstep. In 2007 Press TV goes on air, Iran’s English-language channel, produced from a studio in London. In 2012 the British regulator revokes its licence. The channel stays, via satellite and online. October 2024: MI5 counts twenty Iran-backed plots in the United Kingdom since 2022. October 2025: more than twenty more in a single year. Two weeks earlier, on Yom Kippur, a man attacks the Heaton Park synagogue in Manchester. Two people die. The broadcast has arrived. 86 years after Zeesen.
The receiver is you
Whoever shares the sentence doesn't know they are rebroadcasting it. The film shows the whole route. So you recognise it before you believe it.
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Why we're asking you
A broadcaster needs three years for a film like this. We don't have three years. The numbers from 2024 are the sowing of the next wave, not the harvest of the last. The film is written, the crew is in place, the distributor has signed. What's missing is the money for the shoot and the archive rights. With you, we shoot in 2027. Without you, we wait until someone else tells this story. Nobody will.
Where your money goes
- €15,000
- Shoot in Germany and archive rights, Bundesarchiv
- €30,000
- Shoot in Israel, Spain and Los Angeles
Funding goal €15,000. If we reach €30,000, we shoot every station.
Who's making it
Alexander Gottlieb
Producer
Has worked on several feature films. Regularly takes part in hackathons in Brussels that expose antisemitism online. Knows the Jewish communities from the inside and the streets from the demonstrations of the last two years. He knows how the sentence lands, because he was there when it landed.
Sebastian Bene
Producer
Persian-Jewish content creator. His family lives in the Iranian diaspora, spread across three continents. He speaks Farsi, conducts the interviews with Iranian exiles, and opens the film to an audience that would otherwise never see it. He stands exactly between the two sides this film is about.
Support on StartnextOne from the communities, one from the diaspora. That is not casting, that is the thesis. The film only works if both sides tell it.
The distributor [DISTRIBUTOR] is on board. The crew has made feature films. The only thing missing is the funding.
Every name in the credits
From 1 euro, your name is in the end credits. From 1,500 euros, you're an Associate Producer: your name on the poster and every piece of material, a seat in the crew calls, a voice in decisions. [NUMBER] places.
Crowdfunding ends on [DATE].