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In handcuffs,
David Irving holds his notorious book "Hitler’s War" in which
he claimed the Nazi leader had no knowledge of the "Final
Solution" (EPA/Guenter R Artinger)
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David Irving, the disgraced
historian, was jailed for three years in Austria today after pleading
guilty to criminal charges of denying the Holocaust.
The jail
sentence was imposed despite a last-minute about turn by the author in
court: he conceded that he had been mistaken when he claimed in two
speeches in 1989 that gas chambers at Auschwitz were a
"fairytale".
Irving appeared visibly stunned by the verdict. As
he walked out of court after the seven-hour hearing to begin his sentence
he could only say: "I’m very shocked and I’m going to appeal."
"Stay strong, stay strong, good luck to
you," one onlooker in court shouted to him in English.
The three judges and eight jurors were not
impressed by Irving's change of heart in the courtroom. Passing sentence,
the presiding judge described him as a "falsifier of history dressed
up as a martyr" who had denied the "greatest crime of the 20th
century".
Although it is substantially shorter than the
maximum sentence of ten years imprisonment under Austria's 1946 Banning
Law, the sentence has raised concerns that Irving will become a martyr
among his followers on the far Right.
Before giving testimony in Vienna the British
writer denied that he had ever written a book specifically about the
Holocaust. He said that he now accepted that millions of Jews were indeed
murdered in Nazi death camps.
"I am not a Holocaust denier. My views have
changed," he said outside court. "History is a constantly growing
tree: the more you learn, the more documents are available, the more you
learn, and I have learned a lot since 1989.
"Yes, there were gas chambers," Mr
Irving added. "Millions of Jews died, there is no question. I don’t
know the figures. I’m not an expert on the Holocaust."
The Banning Law makes it an offence to publicly
diminish, deny or justify the Holocaust. Irving has been held without bail
since November on charges stemming from two speeches he made to Austrian
rightwingers in 1989.
Six years after a High Court libel trial that
demolished his reputation as a historical researcher, the case has once
again made
Irving a cause célèbre among European neo-Nazis.
His lawyer says that he received 300 pieces of
fanmail a week during his incarceration and the Vienna courthouse was under
high security to head off neo-Nazi protests.
The 67-year-old arrived at the courthouse in the
same blue pinstripe suit he wore to the High Court trial and, despite being
in handcuffs, clutching a copy of his notorious 1977 book, Hitler's War,
which claimed that the German leader had no knowledge of the "Final
Solution".
During his three months in prison awaiting trial
he has been working on his memoirs, under the working title Irving's War.
Once in the dock, and with his guilty plea out of
the way, Irving addressed the court in German "I made a mistake when I
said there were no gas chambers at Auschwitz," he said.
But he insisted that he never wrote a book about
the Holocaust, which he called "just a fragment of my area of
interest." "In no way did I deny the killings of millions of
people by the Nazis," Irving testified.
Irving has been in custody since his arrest on
November 11 at a motorway service station on charges stemming from two
speeches he gave in Austria in 1989.
He was accused of denying the Nazis’ extermination
of six million Jews after he said: "74,000 [Jews] died of natural
causes in the work camps and the rest were hidden in reception camps after
the war and later taken to Palestine, where they live today under new
identities.
“I stand by what I said, there were no gas
chambers in Auschwitz.”
The state attorney’s office said the 1989 remarks
were "a dangerous violation of freedom of speech". Irving's
lawyers dismissed the law as outdated.
The trial comes amid fierce debate over freedom of
expression in Europe after the publication of caricatures of the Prophet
Muhammad that has triggered violent demonstrations in the Islamic world.
Although Austria's Banning Law is often applied -
charges were brought against 724 people in 2004 - it rarely produces a prison
term, and many Austrians fear that Irving could become a far-right martyr
if he is jailed.
In 2000, the historian sued an American Holocaust
scholar, Deborah Lipstadt, for libel in the High Court in London, but lost.
Mr Justice Gray, the judge in that case, ruled that Mr Irving was indeed
"an active Holocaust denier ... anti-Semitic and racist".
Dr Lipstadt said tonight after the sentencing: “I don’t think
anything’s going to change him. He should have been met by the sound of one
hand clapping. The one thing he deserves, he really deserves, is obscurity.”
Lord Janner, chairman of the Holocaust Educational Trust, said 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,” he said.
Gerald Howarth, Conservative MP for Aldershot,
said that the Austrians “must have taken leave of their senses” to jail Irving.
Mr Howarth, a council member of the Freedom Association, said: “I
think he is the victim of Austria’s
collective self-flagellation. After all, it was their President Waldheim
who turned out to have a rather undistinguished war and I think they have
been breast-beating ever since.”
Richard J
Evans, the Cambridge history professor whose forensic demolition of
Irving's research was key to that defeat, also criticised Austria's
decision to charge Irving, which he said risked making him a martyr to
freedom of speech.
"I think the media circus that we see in
operation now, with hundreds of reporters and TV and radio crews crowding
around the courtroom, shows how counter-productive it all is,"
Professor Evans told Times Online.
"Irving was virtually forgotten before this
trial came up and it's simply drawing unjustified attention to a
discredited figure."
Roger
Boyes of The Times, who was at the Vienna court today, said that Irving
entered the courtroom "with a swagger" but was soon put under
pressure by relentless cross-questioning from the chief judge, who forced
him to apologise for pretty much every view he had expressed over the past
20 years.
Boyes added: "It's becoming like a free
speech seminar. You've got al-Jazeera here, you've got Jyllands-Posten,
all the people affected by the cartoon war. Everyone one is asking why it's
taboo to attack the Holocaust but not to attack the Prophet Muhammad.
"But the case was fought on the detail of
what he said, whether he's really retreated, whether his apologies are
really worth anything, whether the judge jury could believe Irving's
remorse."
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