Austrian Revisionist Convicted

Austrian Revisionist publisher Gerd Honsik has been sentenced to 18 months imprisonment for 14 breaches of a law against “neo-Nazi” activities that makes it a crime to deny crimes allegedly committed by the Hitler regime.

Honsik, 51, had written in his magazine “Halt!” that hydrocyanic gas from the insecticide Zyklon was used in the German wartime concentration camps only to kill vermin in clothing and buildings, but not people.

A criminal court in Vienna convicted Honsik on May 5 under a new Austrian law that makes it a crime to “deny the Holocaust.” The law does not criminalize “denial” of crimes committed by non-Germans, and is itself a politically-motivated violation of the principle of free speech and expression.

Court officials said that the verdict means that two earlier suspended sentences handed down against Honsik for similar violations in Austria and Germany would take effect, thus extending his prison sentence to around three years.

Honsik told the court that he is himself a victim of a campaign against free speech. “When a country locks someone up because he wrote a book, that fascism too,” he said. Defense attorneys said that Honsik would appeal the sentence.

Adapted from IHR Newsletter July/Aug 1992 No.88 PO Box 2739, Newport Beach, CA 92659.