Iran's bizarre international conference questioning the holocaust ended with the country's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, saying Israel will soon be eradicated.

"The Zionist regime will be wiped out soon the same way the Soviet Union was, and humanity will achieve freedom," he said, according to Iran's official news agency IRNA.

Khaled Mahameed, a Palestinian in Nazareth who operates what could be the only Holocaust museum created by a Muslim, told CTV News the atrocity is little understood in his country.

"So I am asking Ahmadinejad, I'm asking all Muslims: What is the danger of acknowledging the Holocaust?" he asked.

The conference drew 67 writers and researchers from 30 countries, including some of the world's most notorious Holocaust deniers, Nazi sympathizers and racists like former Ku Klux Klan Grand Wizard David Duke.

There was even a small group of ultra-Orthodox Jews from the U.S., Britain and Austria at the event. They believe the exile of the Jews can only end with the arrival of the Messiah, and say it's wrong for Jews to set up their own state.

"We object to Zionism, to the acts, the ideas and actions of Zionism," said Rabbi Aharon Cohen.

A Canadian professor also attended the conference and said he gladly accepted the invitation.

But Dr. Shiraz Dossa, a soft-spoken political science professor at Nova Scotia's St. Francis Xavier University, said he didn't put himself in the same category as some of the "hacks and lunatics'' attending the event.

He told The Globe and Mail he presented a paper about how the Holocaust has been used to justify anti-Islamic policies in the U.S. war on terror.

Canadian Jewish leaders blasted Dossa for giving credibility to the two-day conference, which has been condemned by most Western governments, including Canada's.

"Although we don't know what the professor said at the conference, attending and giving credibility to such an event shocks the conscience of right-thinking Canadians," Ed Morgan, president of the Canadian Jewish Congress, told The Associated Press.

"This conference was nothing more than a vicious public attempt to whitewash the proven facts."

Prime Minister Stephen Harper had joined a chorus of world leaders condemning the gathering in Tehran.

Harper called the conference an offence to all Canadians and condemned in the strongest terms Ahmadinejad's latest anti-Israeli and racist statements.

British Prime Minister Tony Blair called the Iranian president's remark shocking beyond belief and says it's proof of his extremism.

"I think it is such a symbol of sectarianism and hatred toward people of another religion. I find it just unbelievable, really," Blair said in London.

"I mean, to go and invite the former head of the Ku Klux Klan to a conference in Tehran which disputes the millions of people who died in the Holocaust ... what further evidence do you need that this regime is extreme?"

With a report by CTV's Janis Mackey Frayer and files from The Associated Press