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UK/Austria: "Holocaust denier" arrested

01 November 2005

The right-wing revisionist "historian", David Irving, was arrested in Vienna during November on an outstanding arrest warrant dating back to 1989 that accused him of denying the Holocaust. He is being detained in a Josefstadt prison to prevent his fleeing the country before a court hearing is possible. The Austrian Justice minister has said that he will remain there until his case comes to court. He has already been refused bail and is remanded for four weeks pending trial. Irving has always claimed to be a serious historian but his oeuvre is dismissed by genuine historians who point to his associations with neo-nazi organisations across Europe - he was scheduled to make a speech to a far-right student organisation when he was arrested. Denying the Holocaust in Austria carries a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison.

In the UK Irving has faced repeated claims of anti-Semitism and disseminating racist propaganda because of his association with neo-nazi organisations such as the British National Party. Aside from the outstanding Austrian warrant, Irving was fined by a German court for publicly denying the existence of the gas chambers in 1992; he is banned from public speaking in that country. In 2000 he was made bankrupt when he lost a libel case he brought against Professor Deborah Lipdstast in London, whom he had accused of denigrating his views. At the London trial the historian Richard J. Evans described Irving work thus: "Not one of his books, speeches or articles, not one paragraph, not one sentence in any of them can be taken on trust as an accurate representation of its historical subject. All of them are completely worthless as history, because Irving cannot be trusted anywhere, in any of them, to give a reliable account of what he is talking or writing about." The judge at the same trial said that Irving had falsified history and could accurately be described as a "Holocaust denier". He described him as "an active Holocaust denier" who was "an anti-Semitic racist who associated with right-wing extremists who promote neo-Nazism".

Times 18.11.05, Independent 18.11.05.