Holocaust Denier Gets Three Years

[Kat Kanning]

Protecting people from Nazis by acting like them.   


Holocaust Denier Gets Three Years

By VERONIKA OLEKSYN, Associated Press Writer 43 minutes ago

VIENNA, Austria - Right-wing British historian David Irving pleaded guilty Monday to denying the Holocaust and was sentenced to three years in prison, even after conceding he wrongly said there were no Nazi gas chambers at the Auschwitz concentration camp.
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Irving, handcuffed and wearing a navy blue suit, arrived in court carrying a copy of one of his most controversial books ? "Hitler's War," which challenges the extent of the Holocaust.

"I made a mistake when I said there were no gas chambers at Auschwitz," Irving told the court before his sentencing, at which he faced up to 10 years in prison.

He also expressed sorrow "for all the innocent people who died during the Second World War."

But he insisted he never wrote a book about the Holocaust, which he called "just a fragment of my area of interest."

"In no way did I deny the killings of millions of people by the Nazis," testified Irving, who has written nearly 30 books.

Irving's lawyer immediately announced he would appeal the sentence.

"I consider the verdict a little too stringent. I would say it's a bit of a message trial," Elmar Kresbach said.

Irving appeared shocked as the sentence was read. Moments later, an elderly man who identified himself as a family friend called out, "Stay strong, David! Stay strong!" before he was escorted from the courtroom.

Irving, 67, has been in custody since his November arrest on charges stemming from two speeches he gave in Austria in 1989 in which he was accused of denying the Nazis' extermination of 6 million Jews. He has contended that most of those who died at concentration camps such as Auschwitz succumbed to diseases such as typhus rather than execution.

The court convicted Irving after his guilty plea under the 1992 law, which applies to "whoever denies, grossly plays down, approves or tries to excuse the National Socialist genocide or other National Socialist crimes against humanity in a print publication, in broadcast or other media."

Irving's trial came amid new ? and fierce ? debate over freedom of expression in Europe, where the printing and reprinting of unflattering caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad has triggered deadly protests worldwide.

Kresbach said last month the controversial Third Reich historian was getting up to 300 pieces of fan mail a week from supporters around the world and was writing his memoirs in detention under the working title "Irving's War."

Irving was arrested Nov. 11 in the southern Austrian province of Styria on a warrant issued in 1989. He was charged under a federal law that makes it a crime to publicly diminish, deny or justify the Holocaust.

Irving had tried to win his provisional release on $24,000 bail, but a Vienna court refused, saying it considered him a flight risk.

Within two weeks of his arrest, he asserted through his lawyer that he had come to acknowledge the existence of Nazi-era gas chambers. Before the trial began, Irving told reporters he now acknowledges that the Nazis systematically slaughtered Jews during World War II.

"History is like a constantly changing tree," he said.

In the past, however, he has claimed that Adolf Hitler knew little if anything about the Holocaust, and he has been quoted as saying there was "not one shred of evidence" the Nazis carried out their "Final Solution" to exterminate the Jewish population on such a massive scale.

Vienna's national court, where the trial is being held, ordered the balcony gallery closed to prevent projectiles from being thrown down at the bench, the newspaper Die Presse reported Sunday.

It quoted officials as saying they were bracing for Irving's supporters to give him the Nazi salute or shout out pro-Hitler slogans during the trial.

In 2000, Irving sued American Holocaust scholar Deborah Lipstadt for libel in a British court but lost. The presiding judge in that case, Charles Gray, wrote that Irving was "an active Holocaust denier ... anti-Semitic and racist."

Irving has had numerous run-ins with the law over the years.

In 1992, a judge in Germany fined him the equivalent of $6,000 for publicly insisting the Nazi gas chambers at Auschwitz were a hoax.

[KBCraig]

Protecting people from Nazis by acting like them.   

This is why the "Is America a police state?" poll needs another option: "Compared to what?"

It sucks here. But it sucks much worse almost everywhere else.

Kevin

[aries]

Agreed, KBCraig. Free or not, we're still the most free.

Now... I'm pretty sure that no "holocaust" ever happened...

Kidding! Or am I...? the British police would like to know!

[Pat K]

Protecting people from Nazis by acting like them.   

This is why the "Is America a police state?" poll needs another option: "Compared to what?"

It sucks here. But it sucks much worse almost everywhere else.

Kevin

That just don't make me feel any better.

[aries]

Protecting people from Nazis by acting like them.   

This is why the "Is America a police state?" poll needs another option: "Compared to what?"

It sucks here. But it sucks much worse almost everywhere else.

Kevin

That just don't make me feel any better.

It's the sad truth... the entire WORLD is overrun by huge governments and restricted freedoms. America is one of the last places in the world where you can get same-day medical treatment, especially for small nonlethal sicnesses (thanks to PRIVATE healthcare), and one of the last places you can still carry a gun... even a handgun, concealed, around with you where you go.

[Pat McCotter]

Iraqis and Palestinians seem to be able to carry their automatics around.

[tracysaboe]

Agreed, KBCraig. Free or not, we're still the most free.

Now... I'm pretty sure that no "holocaust" ever happened...

Kidding! Or am I...? the British police would like to know!

I think the mainstream estimates way over-exagerated. But that's different from saying that I don't believe it happened. It did, and it was evil and terrible.

Tracy

[tracysaboe]

Actually there are places that ARE freer then America.

Relatively speaking in terms of practical freedom China can even be considered more free. Indeed, they don't even HAVE socialized medicine there. The entire economy is almost free market. They just call it communism. (I've been there, lived there, no people who grew up there, I know.) Now it's true that if you critisize the government you get thrown in prison. And it's true that if they actually catch you having more then one kid they'll force you to murder it in the womb. And It's true that if you openly call yourself a christian they'll imprison you.

But seriously. Which is more important? The freedom to critisize your government and live in a socialist police state hell-hole.  Not having the freedom to critisize your government, but being able to live your life. And the fact is their aren't enough people in government to be able to really enforce the evil laws that are on the books.

I think Singapore -- in terms of economic freedom they're more free then the U.S. And Switzerland in  many ways is definitely more free and decentralized.

Tracy

[president]

I think the mainstream estimates way over-exagerated. But that's different from saying that I don't believe it happened. It did, and it was evil and terrible.

That makes you a "Holocaust Denier". Jason Sorens said I am one.

[tracysaboe]

I think the mainstream estimates way over-exagerated. But that's different from saying that I don't believe it happened. It did, and it was evil and terrible.

That makes you a "Holocaust Denier". Jason Sorens said I am one.

Technically it would make me a Holocaust minimalizer. I personally know Jewish people who went through it.  The stats are just a bit trumped up.

But if they want to change the definitions of words and smear us with the word "denier" I guess that's their business.

Tracy

[intergraph19]

Protecting people from Nazis by acting like them.   

This is why the "Is America a police state?" poll needs another option: "Compared to what?"

It sucks here. But it sucks much worse almost everywhere else.

Kevin

Yes it does.  At least here you can disagree with history and not get tossed in jail...yet

Iraqis and Palestinians seem to be able to carry their automatics around.

Well, if your a man.  I, on the other hand, am a white blond.  I'd be mincemeat.

[Dreepa]

Having walked the fields in Auschwitz... I am pretty sure it happened.  I mean why would the Poles want to help the Jews out? Especially from 1945- 1989. (Soviet Sphere)

[Lloyd Danforth]

I'm sure it happened, I just question the numbers. One reason is because officials lie and two because I doubt they had an accurate count of Jews , Gypsy's and others the killed either before or after WWII.
It doesn't make it any less a Holocaust.
Call me a Holocaust qualifier.

[president]

Technically it would make me a Holocaust minimalizer. I personally know Jewish people who went through it.  The stats are just a bit trumped up.

But if they want to change the definitions of words and smear us with the word "denier" I guess that's their business.

I'm sure it happened, I just question the numbers.
...
Call me a Holocaust qualifier.

Most people tend to call it "holocaust revisionism".

I think linking to this site is what caused Jason Sorens to call me a Holacaust Denier.

http://www.revisionists.com/revisionism.html

Holocaust Revisionism:
Pronunciation: 'hO-l&-"kost, ri-'vi-zh&-"ni-z&m Noun: 1: The act of revising World War Two history in accordance with the real facts

What Holocaust Revisionism is and is not:

Revisionists object to the terminology, "THE Holocaust," which by implication suggests it was unique, monumental, over-arching, perhaps even the central historical event of our century if not epoch. In fact there have been many holocausts over the centuries, a good portion of them in our own Twentieth century. The Jewish Holocaust is merely one of them, and not even one of the more vicious ones.

From the point of view of the world as a whole it is far from the greatest or most terrible, Hollywood to the contrary notwithstanding. A marked improvement in both accuracy and objectivity can be achieved if the term "Jewish Holocaust" is substituted for the term "THE Holocaust."

Revisionists are, in fact, Holocaust DIMINISHERS, not deniers. They are questioners about what they believe are significant exaggerations in the Holocaust tale, and they are critics of the view that somehow this historical event is beyond discussion on pain of being placed in the category of child-molester or worse, shunned by society, even fined and imprisoned by some so-called free countries in the western world.

      Were their any Jewish Victims in WWII?

Revisionists do not deny that there was much Jewish suffering during WW II, that there were many Jews who had property confiscated wrongfully, that many Jews died of disease or starvation in terrible conditions or were killed, that there were terrible brutalities and atrocities committed against Jews by Germans and others. None of this do Revisionists deny. Revisionists do diminish the impact of these facts by pointing out that WWII was the bloodiest, deadliest, most atrocity-ridden conflict in the history of man and that there was criminal behavior on all sides. One need merely mention Dresden, Hiroshima, Nagasaki, the deadly carpet bombing of German and Japanese working class living areas, the Soviet rape of Germany in their 1945 advance, the treatment of German civilians and German POW's after the war. One could go on almost ad infinitum in this recitation of atrocities. Fifty million - some say sixty million - died as a result of the war.

[Dreepa]

Come on the German's are sticklers for numbers.