Posted on 05/20/2007 11:01:22 AM PDT by lizol
Holocaust denier, David Irving, is thrown out of a Polish book convention for breaking anti-nazi laws
Published on 20 May 2007 | Author MORRIS, Nick.
British "historian" and convicted Holocaust denier, David Irving, has been thrown out of a Polish book fair due to the Nazi apologist nature of his writings.
Organisers of a Polish book fair today asked Irving, who was jailed in Austria for denying the Holocaust, to leave the event.
Irving had been scheduled to present his books at an event organised by British publisher Focal Point, said Grzegorz Guzowski, head of the Ars Polonia company, which organised the Warsaw International Book Fair.
He said Irving's publishers did not send materials detailing his work to the fair until a few hours before the deadline, giving organisers too little time to prevent the self-taught historian from setting up a table at the exhibition.
"Polish laws prohibiting the promotion of fascism and defamation of people on racial and religious grounds could conceivably be extended to include Irving's writings," he added.
Guzowski said that, when organisers were alerted to the nature of Irving's work, he told the writer to go.
"I told him his message was in violation of Polish law and that I would not allow him to deliver it at the book fair premises, and I asked him to leave" Guzowski said.
"At first he refused and started shouting that there is no freedom of speech and that Poland is not a democratic country, but eventually he left" he added.
"Our employees helped him pack up his things, and our car drove him to the address he specified."
Irving was sentenced in February 2006 to three years under an Austrian law that applies to "whoever denies, grossly plays down, approves or tries to excuse" the Nazi genocide or other Nazi crimes against humanity.
The charges stemmed from two speeches he gave in Austria in 1989.
He was released after a court converted two-thirds of his three-year sentence into probation.
In Poland, denying the Holocaust is a crime that can carry a prison term. However, Irving is not currently under investigation there.
Irving plans to remain in the country for a few more days to visit Auschwitz and other Nazi concentration camps in Poland.
"It's ironic that it's come to a situation like this in Poland, which fought against restrictions on speech for such a long time," Irving was quoted by daily Zycie Warszawy as saying.
Between this and the gay thing, the Poles are batting 1.000.
Irving is mono-maniacal. But before he became so he did some excellent historical work.
We should always be thankful for our Bill of Rights, which prohibits the govenment from interfering with the expression of even idiotic viewpoints like Irving’s.
You know you’ve hit bottom when...
I think for Irving that was when he referred to the judge at the libel trial he brought against Deborah Lipstadt as "Mein Fuhrer".
Poland might be a good place to visit!
Bravo!!! In many ways, Poland is showing itself to be a nation with a lot of integrity and a good friend to America.
So...does this mean there won’t be a Ron Paul campaign visit there any time soon?
Irving's country did not assist in the deportation of Jews.
There are European countries, not in the Axis powers that did assist in the deportation of Jews.
We know who they are.
6 Million Poles were killed by the Nazis. 3 million were Jewish and 3 million were Catholic or Orthodox. Irving was lucky not to have been beaten to a pulp.
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