DAVID IRVING

Kontrowersyjny brytyjski historyk zostal wczoraj skazany na trzy lata wiezienia w Austrii za negowanie istnienia Holocaustu. Austria i Niemcy to dwa panstwa w Europie, ktore uwazaja to za przestepstwo.

Pamietam jak mieszkalem w Ottawie mialem okrazje spotkac sie z Davidem Irvingiem. Wystepowal z prelekcja w Ottawa Congress Centre gdzie wowczas pracowalem w ochronie. Pamietam juz wtedy bylo to spotkanie bardzo kontrowersyjne. Demonstracje przed Ottawskim Centrum Kongresowym. Wzmozona ochrona wewnatrz i na zewnatrz budynku.

Z tej racji, ze bylem pracownikiem wszedlem za darmo przez glowne wejscie. Demonstranci z plakatami wyzywali (nawet pluli), szturchali wchodzacych gosci, wykrzykiwali, wyzywali od faszystow. Policja stala bezczynnie.

Wewnatrz okolo 300 osob. Irving badzo bystry, elokwentny i inteligentny. Rzucal cytatami z pamieci, nawet ze zrodel niemieckich po niemiecku. Po prelekcji seria pytan z sali. Stoisko z jego ksiazkami. Kupilem "Hitler's War". Takze rzucalo sie w oczy kilku ogolonych na lyso i ubranych w czarne skory mlodziencow - sympatykow Irvinga.

Na obwolucie ksiazki "Hitler's War" cytaty:

"A brilliant study of War... Fascinating... Vivid" - The New Yorker.
David Irwing - Author of the "Trail of the Fox".
"One of the half dozen most important books about the war" - John Keegan "History of the second world war".
"[Irving] has done the seemingly impossible... The best account yet of how 1939-1945 looked through Adolf Hitler's eyes" - Dallas Times Herald.

W dyskusji ktora sie wywiazala po prelekcji, Irving stwierdzil, ze Hitler wlasciwie wygral wojne dla Niemcow, ktore wkrotce opanuja ekonomicznie Wschodnia Europe i Rosje, tak jak chcial tego Adolf. Uwazal, ze wladze PRL sfabrykowali opowiesci o Oswiecimiu i zawyzyli liczbe straconych Zydow. Mowil, ze nowe wladze Polski juz probuja korygowac te liczbe.

HOLOCAUST

Right-wing British historian David Irving pleaded guilty yesterday to charges of denying the Holocaust and was sentenced to three years in prison. Irving conceded he was wrong to say there were no Nazi gas chambers at the Auschwitz concentration camp (24 HOURS, February 21, 2006).

British historian vows to appeal three-year sentence after admitting Holocaust occurred

IRVING REPENTANT, BUT JAILED

'LIP SERVICE TO THE LAW'

BY KATE CONNOLLY

VIENNA - An Austrian court sentenced British historian David Irving to three years in prison yesterday for denying the Holocaust during a 1989 stopover in Austria, dismissing his argument that he had changed his views.
Irving pleaded guilty, hoping for a suspended sentence, but the Vienna criminal court concluded he was only making a pretense of acknowledging Nazi Germany's genocide against Jews in order to escape a jail term.
"The court did not consider the defendant to have genuinely changed his mind," Judge Peter Liebetreu told the court after pronouncing the sentence. "The regret he showed was considered to be mere lip service to the law."
His lawyer Elmar Kresbach said that even if Irving, 67, lost the appeal, he was likely to serve a maximum 11/2 to two years because of his age and status as a first-time offender.
"I'm shocked and I will be appealing," Irving said as he was led from the court by armed police. During the 10-hour trial he apologized for his "mistakes" and "errors of judgment" in claiming that there were no gas chambers in the Third Reich.
"I made a mistake by saying there were no gas chambers," he told the court, which he addressed in fluent German. "I am absolutely without doubt that the Holocaust took place."
He also apologized to "those few I might have offended." But Judge Liebetreu said that the court was not convinced Irving had altered his views. "We've seen no evidence that he tried to come to Austria to say, 'I've changed my mind,' and to prove that he was a different person," he said.
Irving appeared in Austria's national criminal court on charges that he had denied the Holocaust during a visit to the country in November, 1989. He clutched the most famous of his 30 published books, Hitler's War, in one hand, and a copy of Eggs, Beans and Crumpets, by P.G. Wodehouse, himself accused of being a Nazi sympathizer, in the other.
During two lectures and in an interview to a newspaper in 1989, he called the gas chambers a "fairy tale," claimed that Hitler had had no role in the Holocaust and had even "offered his hand to protect the Jews." The 22-page charge sheet listed some of the statements he had made, including the claim that the accepted version of the Holocaust - the Nazis' systematic extermination of six million Jews - was an "absolute absurdity" that "millions of people were led to believe."
Yesterday he tried to convince the three judges and eight jurors that he started to change his mind in 1991, due to "new evidence." This came from the papers of Adolf Eichmann, in which the leading Nazi described visiting a gas chamber, and a friendship Irving formed with a Canadian professor whose family had died in the Holocaust and who had "papers to prove it."
"I like to find my own sources and work it out for myself," he said. But prosecutor Michael Klacki offered evidence that he said proved Irving still held his controversial views at least until last year. Denying the Holocaust is a crime in Austria, the country of Adolf Hitler's birth, and Irving faced a sentence of up to 10 years.
"You can go on the streets of England and say 'Hitler was a great fellow,' and nothing will happen to you," Mr. Kresbach said. "It should be allowed to make such statements here after 60 years of successful democracy."
Lord Janner, chairman of the Holocaust Educational Trust, said that he was "pleased" at Irving's conviction. "It is the conviction and not the sentence that matters. It sends a clear message to the world that we must not tolerate the denial of the mass murders of the Holocaust."
However a British Rabbi, Dr. Jonathan Romain, the director of the Jewish Information and Media Service, questioned whether Irving should have been jailed.
"I welcome yet another public rebuff for David Irving's pseudohistorical views," Dr. Romain said, "although personally I prefer to treat him with disdain rather than imprisonment."
The Daily Telegraph, with files from Reuters (NATIONAL POST, Tuesday, February 21, 2006).

AUSTRIAN JUDGE SENTENCES HOLOCAUST DENIER TO THREE YEARS

HOLOCAUST DENIER DAVID IRVING got three years in the slammer from and Austrian court yesterday after pleading guilty to denying the Nazis killed millions of Jews during the Second World War.
Irving, who was arrested in Austria in November, had hoped to get a suspended sentence by conceding he'd denied the Holocaust during a 1989 stopover in the country. The judges didn't buy his remorse.
"The court did not consider the defendant to have genuinely changed his mind," presiding judge Peter Liebetreu told the court. "The regret he showed was considered to be mere lip service to the law."
Irving, who says he changed his views on the Holocaust after reading the papers of Nazi Adolf Eichmann, immediately appealed the verdict. He argued the case against him was a denial of his right to free speech. Deborah Lipstadt, an American scholar who Irving sued for libel in 2000, also said she did not wish to see censorship win.
DOSE, REUTERS (DOSE 225 Tuesday 21 February 2006).

Historian sentenced

An Austrian court sentenced British historian David Irving, 67, to three years in prison yesterday for denying the Holocaust, dismissing his argument that he had changed his views.
Irving pleaded guilty, hoping for a suspended sentence, but the Vienna criminal court concluded he was only making a pretence of acknowledging Nazi Germany's genocide against Jews in order to escape a jail term.
Irving was arrested on a return visit to Austria last November, based on warrant over lectures and a press interview he made in 1989 in the Alpine republic, where denying the Nazi genocide is a crime punishable by one to 10 years in prison.
"I'm not a Holocaust denier. Obviously, I've changed my views," Irving told reporters. State prosecutor Michael Klackl contended that Irving was a serial "falsifier of history" and said Irving remained an icon for neo-Nazis and revisionist historians worldwide.
A British High Court ruling in 2000 rejected Irving's libel suit against an American professor and her publishers, declaring Irving "an active Holocaust denier ... anti-Semitic and racist" (METRO, Tuesday, February 21, 2006).

In his office, he eases himself into a chair behind a desk that supports an autographed book by David Irving, who was recently arrested in Austria on charges related to Holocaust denial. On the wall is a map of Hungary as it existed in 1899, before the state was carved up and reduced to about a third of its previous size by the Treaty of Trianon in 1920.
"David Irving is my personal friend," says Csurka. "And it is our moral responsibility to stand with him." As for the map of greater Hungary, Csurka sighs. "All of this was once ours," he says. "But you should also know that this little bowl that is now Hungary is in just as much danger of being lost as that former great country, and we concentrate on protecting what we have." When asked who or what is threatening Hungary, Csurka talks about "international capital," "bankers" and "Bolsheviks." His critics often accuse him of using these words as code for Jews. Cusrka rejects this, so I ask him directly if Hungary's 50,000 Jews, who make up about 0.5 perc cent of the 10-million-strong population, are a threat to the country (prior to the Second World War, Hungary had 400,000 Jews).
"It is not a racial issue - this doesn't exist," he says. "But as a political issue, as a question of those who are in power and who control things, it does. When we talk about control of the media, banks, of all powers, especially financial, there is a small group that controls all this. And they are Jewish, whether they consider themselves to be Jewish or not (Michael Petrou, "Neo-neo-Nazis * New fascist movements find fertile ground in the turmoil of eastern Europe", MACLEAN'S, Feb. 27'06).

Scholar claimed only 30,000 Jews were killed at Auschwitz

David Irving appeared in Vienna's criminal court yesterday, clutching his notorious book, Hitler's War. "It's my flagship," he said. "It represents more than 35 years of my life." Each edition has been painstakingly revised by Irving since it was first published in 1977. In it he claims the dictator had no knowledge of plans to exterminate the Jews.
With each update, Hitler's responsibility for the Holocaust has diminished, and the 67-year old has been further isolated by respected historians who once praised him for his thoroughness and indefatigable scholarship.
David John Caldwell Irving was born in Macrch, 1938, in Hutton, Essex, the son of a lieutenant commander in the Royal Navy. He rebelled at an early age when he requested Mein Kampf as a school prize.
He failed to graduate from Imperial College, London, or from the London School of Economics, abandoning his studies because, he said: "By then I was already a successful writer."
His first book, The Destruction of Dresden, described the 1945 bombing of the city as "the worst single massacre in European history." The book was successful and launched his career as an author.
After the success of Hitler's War, he took his theses ever further, claiming that the gas chambers did not exist and that the figure of six million Jews killed in them "was a meaningless sum."
A mere 30,000 Jews were murdered at Auschwitz in Nazi-occupied Poland, he claimed, rather than the accepted figure of 1.5 million. The Poles, he said, had built the gas chambers there after the war to "match" the "fantasies" of survivors who were "in need of psychiatric care."
Warrants for his arrest were issued in Austria and Germany after he addressed right-wing groups. The crunch came for him in 2000 when he took the American academic Deborah Lipstadt to court for libel after she called him a "Holocaust denier."
The judge in the case called him a "racist, an anti-Semite and an active Holocaust denier." Irving was bankrupted by the case.
The Daily Telegraph (NATIONAL POST, Tuesday, February 21, 2006).