Posted on 11/25/2005 8:15:26 PM PST by REactor
BRITISH historian David Irving now acknowledges Nazi gas chambers existed, and admits some of his past statements could be interpreted as denying people were gassed.
On the day before Irving faces a court hearing, his lawyer Elmar Kresbach said the historian had "changed some of the views he is so famous for".
"He told me: 'Look, there was a certain period when I drew conclusions from individual sources which are maybe provocative or could be misinterpreted or could be even wrong'," Mr Kresbach said.
Prosecutors this week charged Irving, 67, with denying the Holocaust, which is a crime under Austrian law.
The charges stem from two speeches Irving gave in Austria in 1989 in which he reportedly denied the existence of the Nazi gas chambers.
He faces up to 10 years in prison if convicted.
In explaining Irving's change of heart, Mr Kresbach said yesterday that additional research the historian carried out after Soviet archives were opened to scholars had persuaded him his former beliefs were "not really worthwhile to hold up".
But Irving's new position was met with scepticism by the Simon Wiesenthal Centre, which works to track down former Nazis before they die.
"It's an admission designed to extricate himself from imprisonment and in no way truly reflects his views," said Efraim Zuroff, director of the centre, based in Los Angeles.
Dr Zuroff said Irving had learned from his previous legal battles and was "trying to minimise the danger". Under Austrian law, Irving cannot be interviewed while he is in custody.
But in the past, Irving has claimed Adolf Hitler knew nothing about the systematic slaughter of 6million Jews, and has said there was "not one shred of evidence" the Nazis carried out their "Final Solution" to exterminate the Jews.
He is the author of nearly 30 books, including Hitler's War, which challenges the extent of the Holocaust and looks at the conduct of World War II from Hitler's perspective.
Mr Kresbach said Irving was now "correcting himself", insisting that the historian "sees himself as somebody who can influence marginal groups who have difficulty believing in the Third Reich".
He said he would argue at a custody hearing overnight that Irving should be released on bail.
No date for the trial has been announced.
In Austria, suspected violations of the law banning attempts to publicly diminish, deny or justify the Holocaust are heard in court by an eight-person jury and three judges.
Irving's arrest won praise worldwide. Earlier this week, Lord Greville Janner of the Britain-based Holocaust Educational Trust praised the Austrians "for doing what our law should but does not permit".
In 2000, Irving brought a libel case against US academic Deborah Lipstadt, who described him as a Holocaust denier.
But the case, heard in London, backfired when the judge ruled against Irving, leaving him bankrupt with huge legal bills.
Amen.
shoot him in the face.
And there was also a time you could be punished for saying the earth isn't flat.
Perhaps.
But I am reminded that history is written by the victors.
Same piano, different song.
Quite so, as constrained by the normal principles concerning speech expressly intended to bring about injury, such as libel and slander, incitement to riot, and such. The answer to the Michael Moores of the world isn't to clap them in irons but to refute them in public.
Irving shoulda not set foot in Austria - of all people he oughtta have known what a vengeful hornets nest that would be. I'm assuming this came from a voluntary visit to Austria, not some extradition deal where Britain sent him there.
Ognib.
I'm not sticking up for Irving. The man is clearly a scum, a bigot, and a liar. I just wonder whether legal prosecution is the correct answer to such people.
Where we may disagree is that I don't think a resurgence of Nazism or right-wing antisemitism is nearly as big a danger in Austria today as leftist antisemitism. As a matter of fact, it's not clear at all that Nazi was, as liberals pretend, a conservative aberration. It resembles Communism much more closely than it resembles any kind of rational conservatism, and it is well known that Mussolini started out as a Communist.
The worst present danger to Jews in Europe is the coalition of leftists and Islamists. If the Jews once again have to flee Europe, I expect that is what they will be fleeing from--the sort of thing we have just seen in the French riots.
If there is any danger from the right, it is the constant habit that the socialists have of demonizing the right. They do this, basically, for political reasons, so the centrists will always feel obliged to form coalition governments with the left rather than the right. We saw that with Haider. If the socialists and centrists leave people no where else to go to solve the Muslim immigration crisis, for instance, then they will probably eventually turn to the bigots, because they are the only ones who are suggesting a solution. In other words, if something like fascism rises again, it will not be from nostalgia, but from desperation.
I agree that doing it in Austria is different from doing it in England, because presumably some group of Austrians must have invited him to speak.
But see my post above. I don't think we disagree about Irving, we just disagree on what the most prudent way of dealing with it is.
How Austrians deal with hate crimes (a dubious category but perhaps sometimes justified) is their business. But since Irving evidently hasn't spread his lies there for 16 years, this prosecution doesn't strike me as an imminent necessity to prevent the spread of Naziism.
So you even seek to control any words I have to say too, by demanding my answer fit your format--else you will call me names.
If there is nothing to hide, what do you fear?
You called it
Canadian Universities are replete with students and a professor or two, supporting death to living Jews(Israelis). Irving was turned back from Canada to lecture on an unrelated subject,not the holocaust.
The Canadian Government steers well clear of any possible organization that could hit back.
Precisely. Irving, Zundel and their like are reprehensible. But to act as if they are the threat, rather than the mullahs, is foolhardy in the extreme.
That's a good observation.
Conditions are what cause different kinds of governments to arise, not idealism of itself.
The repression of free exchange of ideas is like the repression of relgion or of democratic thinking the Soviet Union.
What is to fear if one is doing the right thing, compared to the danger of repressing the free exchange of ideas?
People should remember that we often bring about the very thing we most fear by being too much afraid of it.
It's well known that Hitler rose to power largely because of the desperation of the German people, who were suffering from the corruption and ineptitude of the Weimar government, hyperinflation, the threat of Communist agitators from the East, and the stupid insistence of France that Germany repay war debts they simply could not meet.
This is not to excuse what happened, but simply to point out that it's not smart to back desperate people into a corner. The allies pushed the Germans when they were hungry, weak and desperate, and then they made the opposite mistake and tried to appease them after Hitler came to power.
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