“A central Nazi motivation for the war was a hatred of Jews,” Mr. Bauer said. “This was no propaganda, but a deeply held belief that demanded action to prevent the physical annihilation of the German people at the hands of the chimera he and millions of others believed, and still believe in — of a secret cabal, of an invented international Jewry, that controls both East and West.

“Isis and Qaeda disseminate this today,” Mr. Bauer added. “World war was a result.”

Noting that World War II had killed some 35 million people, of whom only about 5.6 to 5.7 million were Jews who died in the Holocaust, Mr. Bauer said: “Some 29 million were non-Jews from Europe and North America, who died in large part because of the hatred of Jews — and the majority of these victims were Soviet citizens.

“Anti-Semitism is not a Jewish illness, but a non-Jewish one,” he continued. “It is a cancer that kills and destroys your nations and your societies and your countries. So there are, my friends, 29 million reasons for you to fight anti-Semitism. Not because of the Jews, but to protect your societies from a deadly cancer.

“Don’t you think,” he concluded, “that 29 million reasons are enough?”

‘Leave history for the historians,’ Israel’s president said.

The ongoing battle among Russia, Poland and other nations over the history of the Holocaust and responsibility for World War II, which overshadowed the gathering in Jerusalem, came in for pointed criticism from Israel’s president, Reuven Rivlin.