Posted on 02/20/2006 6:20:05 PM PST by indcons
British historian David Irving was sentenced in Austria to three years in prison after pleading guilty on Monday to charges of denying the Holocaust, saying he erred in contending there were no Nazi gas chambers during the Second World War.
Irving could have received a 10-year prison term. Under Austrian law, it is a crime to publicly diminish, deny or justify the Holocaust.
Handcuffed and wearing a dark suit, Irving arrived at the courthouse in Vienna carrying one of his books, Hitler's War, which challenges the extent of the Holocaust.
"I made a mistake when I said there were no gas chambers at Auschwitz," Irving, 68, told the court.
Before entering the courtroom, Irving told reporters he now believes the Nazis slaughtered Jews during the war.
"History is like a constantly changing tree," said Irving. "The more you know, the more documents become available, the more you learn, and I have learned a lot since 1989."
Irving has written close to 30 books.
He was arrested in November 1989 after giving speeches in Austria in which he denied the Nazis killed six million Jews.
Irving had contended most of the Jews who died during the war succumbed to diseases such as typhus.
The Austrian law, enacted in 1992, also forbids the formation of any neo-Nazi party, handing out a 10- to 20-year prison sentence for those convicted. Austria's Justice Ministry says there have been 158 convictions under the law between 1999 and 2004.
This is a bizarre news story; I thought i was a spoof at first, or some type of "The Onion" story. I can't believe Austria holds it a crime to deny/justify/diminish the Holocaust, punishable by prison term. I mean, i'm all for discouraging stupidity among the population, but punishing absurd opinions with prison time seems a wee bit excessive.
If the law has been in effect only since 1992, how was he arrested in 1989?
France has actually begun prosecuting people who speak ill of Islamofascism, and Austria is not far behind.
Europeans generally have the idea that if you can just punish people for what they say they won't do bad things.
I think the previous arrest is in no way connected to this latest sentence by the Austrian court. I think both Austria and Germany have had such laws for a few decades now (post WW2).
thank goodness we replaced the nazi's with the thought police ....
The article is in error. The law dates from 1948.
What on earth are you babbling about? Austria is easily the most conservative of the old EU-15 nations.
I think they take it more serious b/c of their intimate experience with the Nazis. Just like how Germany bans the swastika and numerous other things related to the Nazis.
I don't agree with the law (though I shed no tears at a jerk like Irving getting jail time). But it's the law the Austrian people decided on. You have to follow the laws or pay the price.
Fifth (at least) post of this story.
Terrible sentence. Jailing assorted cranks and nincompoops who hold bizarre views does not help get rid of antisemitism. What next? Laws jailing people who insult Mohammad? I would not put this past the ultra-sensitive secularist European crowd.Free speech should have NO restrictions.Period.
To the degree the speech-codes are part of the anti-Nazi laws, they can be blamed on the victors in the biggest war ever held ~ and, of course, Germany and Austria were the losers of that war.
However, the laws that focus on so-called "Holocaust Revisionism" are more recent. Although I'm sure they have an older statutory basis, much of the craziest stuff comes out of former court rulings (stare decesis), and clever inventions by prosecutors intent on having an anti-Nazi laurel in their cap when running for elective office.
The Allies did not install free speech or a free press in Germany or Austria, which is one of the reasons the Germans and Austrians appear to be doing totally bizarre things when it comes to speech. Most Americans find these prosecutions to be totally alien ~ the very sort of thing to make us want to keep our distance from them, and maintain the occupation into the indefinite future.
In short, prosecuting people for speech is simply more evidence of the fundamental authoritarian nature of the Central European political mind ~ and we must continue to be on our guard against it once again taking a turn to totalitarianism.
Only free speech can serve to dispel the problem.
Different source and title.....perfectly okay according to FR rules (unless you have made up new ones).
overcompensating for being the birthplace of hitler
LMAO...good one.
Historian? What do you expect from an academic.
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