Elie Wiesel, Richard Holbrooke, and more than a dozen other civic and religious leaders gathered across the street from the Iranian mission to the United Nations in Midtown yesterday to denounce the Iranian president’s call to “wipe Israel off the map.”

Speaking to a crowd of several hundred people on the 67th anniversary of the first major Nazi violence against the Jews, known as Kristallnacht, Mr. Wiesel said, “When a leader of a nation violates all standards of morality and decency by announcing to the whole world his wish to see a nation member of the international community wiped off the map, our immediate response cannot be anything but anger and outrage.”

The Nobel Peace Prize winner added: “We shall remember you along with all the other names of the mass murderers who have killed and killed and killed. Shame on you, President Ahmadinejad of Iran. I hope that in your country there are enough men and women of principal and honor who will oust you from your palace and bring you to justice for threatening the peace of the world.”

The celebrated author of “Night” and other works, Mr. Wiesel survived the Holocaust and was awarded the Nobel in 1986 for his humanitarian efforts on behalf of the international Jewish community and others who suffer oppression.

Mr. Holbrooke, who led the team that brokered the Bosnian Peace Accords at Dayton in 1995 and served as America’s ambassador to the United Nations under President Clinton, condemned Iran’s nuclear program and praised America’s response to Mr. Ahmadinejad’s comments.

“The United States government must continue to object strongly. Kofi Annan was right to cancel his trip. It took him a little while to get there, but he made the right decision. Had he not made that decision, they would have interpreted it, obviously, as, ‘Hey, we can get away with it,'” he said. “When a leader of a country says something as outrageous and as vile as what has been said by the Iranian president – or by Hitler – we must take notice and we must tell them that he and his government must retract it, and they must apologize.”

Mr. Ahmadinejad made his comments in front of thousands of students at a “World Without Zionism” conference in Tehran, Iran, on October 16. “Anybody who recognizes Israel will burn in the fire of the Islamic nation’s fury,” he said. He announced on November 2 that his government would fire 40 diplomats around the world, many of them supporters of warmer ties with the West.

“At least he’s frank about his dreams,” Mr. Wiesel said.

Among those who addressed the rally were the executive director of the Council of Churches of the City of New York, the Reverend John Hiemstra; the chairman of Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, Harold Tanner; the president of New York City’s Central Labor Council, Assembly Member Brian McLaughlin; the publisher of U.S. News & World Report and the New York Daily News, Mortimer Zuckerman, and the managing editor of The New York Sun, Ira Stoll.

Amcha, the Coalition for Jewish Concerns, also held a protest outside the Iranian mission yesterday evening.