Irving Protests German Persecution of Holopaust Skeptics
Historian Still Banned From Germany
As reported in the Jan.-Feb. 1995 Journal. one of France's most prestigious magazines, L'Express. now acknowledges that “everything is false” about the Auschwitz “gas chamber” that for decades has been shown to tens of thousands of tourists yearly.
British historian David Irving has been fined 30,000 marks (about $21,000) by German courts for saying the same thing at a 1990 public meeting in Munich. He has been notified that unless he pays the fine, he will be arrested andjailed for six months if he visits Germany, even for research purposes.
Germany's Constitutional Court refused to hear Irving's appeal of the verdict, or to permit any further appeal of its decision. Irving's attorney has lodged a protest with the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg.
In November 1993 authorities in Munich issued a directive permanently banning Irving from Germany. If he enters the country, it orders, he will be immediately deported.
The ban is necessary, the directive goes on, because “revisionist, right-extremist and neo-N azi groups” continue to show an interest in having Irving as a speaker at their meetings. Authorities have no desire to attend all of his numerous meetings, the directive continues, to check to see if what Irving says at each appearance is actually a violation of law. Therefore, the authorities have decided to ban him altogether.
According to the directive, Irving's public appearances have helped to endanger public security and order, and have seriously harmed the reputation of the German Federal Republic. “Public appearances in Munich by people such as Irving cannot be tolerated,” declared Hans-Peter Uhl, a district government official. (Süddeutsche Zeitung, Munich, Nov. 11, 1993, p. 35.)
German officials issued this ban, at least in large part, in response to pressure from foreign organizations that seek to suppress dissident revisionist views of the official Holocaust extermination story.
Irving, author of numerous best-selling works of history and a contributor to this Journal. is now circulating postcards with a pre-printed message protesting Germany's legal persecution of those who reject the official (and ever-changing) Holocaust extermination story.
He is asking supporters of truth and openness in history to mail the bilingual (English-German) postcards to German embassies and consulates, to German federal authorities in Bonn, and to major German newspapers and magazines.
The postcard text reads as follows:
Dear Sir,
France's most respected weekly magazine L'Express, a liberal publication, has just printed on Jan. [19-25] 26 a long article by noted French historian Eric Conan entitled “Auschwitz: La Memoire du Mal.” In this, M. Conan reveals that the gas chamber shown to tourists at Auschwitz is a forgery, constructed by the Polish communists in 1948. “Tout y est faux,” states Conan: everything there is a fraud.
The Auschwitz state archive and museum officials have confirmed this to him, adding that they have however no plans to change it or draw visitors' attention to the deception. May we ask if your government now accepts this to be true? And if so, what can be done about the fines inflicted on German citizens and the British historian David Irving (fined DM 30,000, banned from Germany and banned from the German Federal Archives where he has worked for thirty years!) for saying precisely the same thing in 1990?
Yours faithfully,
Author
Bibliographic information about this document: The Journal of Historical Review, vol. 15, no. 2 (March/April 1995), p. 28
Other contributors to this document: n/a
Editor’s comments: n/a