Hard Case, Bad Law

22 February 2006



British Holocaust-Denier Sentenced to Three Years in Austrian Prison

David Irving, a British historian with a decidedly revisionist point of view about World War II, pled guilty to violating an Austrian law which makes denying the Holocaust a crime. After a speech he gave in Austrian in 1989, he said he had no choice but to admit guilt. For his efforts, he has won a three-year prison sentence. Hard cases make bad law, indeed.

Mr. Irving studied physics at Imperial College, London, but failed to graduate. After his student phase ended, he was medically unfit for service in the Royal Air Force, and rather than do national service of another kind, he moved to post-war Germany, where he was a steelworker in the Ruhr. Books followed, and he wrote things like the firebombing of Dresden was “the worst single massacre in European history.” And in Hitler's War, he claimed the Fürher knew nothing about the genocide of the Jews until 1943 at the earliest. Up to that point, he was still within the realm of plausibility.

Then, he took the step from historical speculation to historical lying. He claimed that Auschwitz had no gas chambers and that 6 million Jews didn’t die. He recanted in the Austrian courtroom. “I said that then based on my knowledge at the time, but by 1991 when I came across the Eichmann papers, I wasn't saying that anymore and I wouldn't say that now. The Nazis did murder millions of Jews.” Maybe he really means it, maybe he doesn’t. But jail?

A man denies that the Holocaust happens in 1989, and he goes to jail in 2006, coming out in 2009. Meanwhile, the Muslim world looks on astonished that cartoons that allegedly defame the founder of that faith get published in the name of “free speech.” The Austrian law clearly confuses, and it is the wrong way to fight a Nazi revival.

Mr. Irving’s earlier statements were clearly wrong, and the best antidote for falsehood is the truth. There is a ditch at Babi Yar, there are guard towers at Auschwitz, and there are many survivors with eyewitness accounts. Such evidence is the basis for better solutions to Holocaust denial than jailing a man who, at worst, deserves a mixture of contempt and ridicule. Lothar Hobelt, an associate professor of history at the University of Vienna told the BBC, “having a law that says you mustn't question a particular historical instance, if anything, creates doubt about it, because if an argument has to be protected by the force of law, it means it’s a weak argument.” Amen.

The Danish flag appears here as a protest against the violence being done to the free press of that country and elsewhere by those offended by some cartoons of the Prophet Muhammed, peace be unto him. A perceived insult is not an excuse for intimidation and violence, even in the name of the Creator. One cannot insult God, only small-minded men who falsely claim to speak for Him.

© Copyright 2006 by The Kensington Review, Jeff Myhre, PhD, Editor. No part of this publication may be reproduced without written consent. Produced using Fedora Linux.

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