Obama invites Ahmadinejad to visit Nazi-era camp

US President Barack Obama has asked his Iranian counterpart, who says the Holocaust is a "big deception", to visit the site of the Buchenwald concentration camp.

"He should make his own visit," said President Obama who visited the site on Friday. "I have no patience for people who would deny history. And the history of the Holocaust is not something speculative."

Since taking office in 2005, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has launched a campaign to make clear ambiguities about the Holocaust, while criticizing Israel for using the issue as an excuse for its existence.

On Wednesday, Ahmadinejad reiterated his anti-Israel stance and called the Holocaust a "big deception." The Iranian president had earlier made similar comments about the historical event describing it as a "myth".

President Obama, meanwhile, noted that his great uncle helped liberate a camp of Buchenwald during World War II, Reuters reported.

The concentration camp in eastern Germany was created by the Nazis and an estimated 56,000 people are assumed to have been killed there.