Europe Seen Cracking Down on Holocaust Revisionists

[zgrams at zgrams.zundelsite.org]

Good Morning from the Zundelsite:

For those not yet fully informed on what kinds of Orwellian 
censorship precedents are set, here is a summary from a well-known 
Jewish publication:


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Europe Seen Cracking Down on Holocaust Revisionists
By Marc Perelman - Forward (New York) – November 25, 2005


http://www.forward.com/articles/6932


In a flurry of activity on both sides of the Atlantic, several 
so-called revisionists have been arrested on Holocaust denial charges 
in recent weeks.


Three revisionists — Germar Rudolph, Ernst Zundel and Siegfried 
Verbeke — have been extradited to Germany. But the most visible case 
involves far-right British historian David Irving, who was arrested 
November 11 in Vienna, Austria, on 16-year-old charges that he 
publicly denied aspects of the Holocaust — a crime in Austria.


Jewish communal leaders, including Shimon Samuels, international 
relations director of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, praised the moves. 
Samuels said that they were part of an overall trend in Europe toward 
greater attempts to atone for the Holocaust.


"There is a drive toward transparency that is very healthy in 
Europe," he said. "Unlike in America, there is not much difference in 
Europe between hate speech and hate crime. And there seems to be a 
new willingness to use those laws when it comes to Holocaust denial."


Holocaust revisionists, meanwhile, were slamming the crackdown 
efforts, saying they were part of a Jewish conspiracy to prevent open 
debate.


"As the new owner of Germar Rudolf's publishing company, I wish to 
express my outrage that the Holocaust, unlike any other historical 
event, is not subject to critical revisionist investigation," said 
Michael Santomauro, who runs a Web site dedicated to Holocaust denial 
and to attacks against Jewish communal leaders and organizations. 
"Furthermore I deplore the fact that many so-called democratic states 
have laws that criminalize public doubting of the Holocaust. It is my 
position that the veracity of Holocaust assertions should be 
determined in the marketplace of scholarly discourse and not in our 
legislature's bodies and courthouses."


The charges against Irving, filed by Austrian prosecutors, were based 
on two 1989 speeches in which he denied the existence of the gas 
chambers. If convicted, Irving could face up to 20 years in prison.


Irving is the author of nearly 30 books. One of them, "Hitler's War," 
challenges the fact that 6 million Jews were murdered in the 
Holocaust. He once famously insisted that Adolf Hitler knew nothing 
about the systematic slaughter of the Jews, and he has been quoted as 
saying there is "not one shred of evidence" that the Nazis carried 
out their "final solution" on such a scale.


In 2000, Irving lost a libel case he brought against historian 
Deborah E. Lipstadt for calling him a Holocaust denier. The British 
court ruled that Irving was antisemitic and racist and that he 
misrepresented historical information.


In addition to Irving's arrest, Rudolph, 41, was sent from Chicago 
this month to his native Germany, where he was wanted on a 1995 
conviction of inciting racial hatred for disputing the deaths of 
thousands of Jews held captive at a concentration camp. Rudolph was 
sentenced to 14 months in prison for publishing a report disputing 
the deaths of thousands of Jews in the gas chambers at Auschwitz, 
according to a statement by the Department of Homeland Security. 
Rudolph, a former chemist, claimed in his report that since he had 
failed to find traces of Zyklon B on the bricks of gas chambers, mass 
gassings of Jews could not have occurred at Auschwitz.


After his conviction, he fled Germany and lived in Spain, Great 
Britain, Mexico and the United States, according to the DHS press 
release. He was arrested in Chicago October 19 after a background 
check by immigration officials, and deported November 14 to Germany.


Earlier this year, Canada deported Ernst Zundel, 66, to Germany, 
where a state court is hearing charges of incitement, libel and 
disparaging the dead. He faces a maximum sentence of five years in 
jail if convicted. Also, in October a Dutch court agreed to extradite 
Siegfried Verbeke — a co-founder of the Belgian extreme-right Vlaams 
Blok party, now called Vlaams Belang — to Germany, where he faces 
charges of racism and xenophobia and publicly doubting the Holocaust. 
He is looking at 14 months in prison.


Verbeke was convicted on charges of Holocaust denial and racism in 
Belgium in 2003 and sentenced to a one-year jail term. However, 
Belgian authorities refused to extradite him to Germany. After his 
arrest in Amsterdam this past August, he faced similar charges in the 
Netherlands for having questioned the veracity of Anne Frank's diary. 
But the proceedings were suspended and Verbeke was sent to Germany in 
early October.

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