Jan. 20



GERMANY:

Planning the Holocaust

Friday is the anniversary of the Wannsee Conference, during which Nazi
leaders planned the extermination of Europe's Jews. The villa, where in
1942 the meeting took place, has since become a museum and has just
unveiled a new permanent exhibition.

This week sees the opening of a new permanent exhibition at the House of
the Wannsee Conference in time for the anniversary of the infamous
discussion of the Final Solution on January 20th.

The villa, which was built in 1914 by a Jewish architect, provides a
terrifyingly idyllic facade to the horrific plans which were hatched
inside: in 1942 15 high-ranking Nazi civil servants and SS officers met
here and decided to send the Jews of Central Europe to their deaths. Today
the house, which is beside Lake Wannsee on the outskirts of Berlin, is
both a memorial and education center.

(source: Der Spiegel)





AUSTRIA:

The Swastika Wielding Provocateur


British historian and Holocaust denier David Irving, arrested last month
in Austria where his views are illegal, is busy preparing his trial in a
Vienna prison. Could this be the eccentric Hitler admirer's final act of
provocation?

At night, when the pale winter sun has slipped behind the rooftops of
Vienna's Josefstadt district, a jungle comes to life in the prison yard at
the city's old Imperial-era prison. "That's when they start yelling from
the windows and talking to one another," says David Irving, "it all begins
at nightfall, just like in the jungle."

The elderly gentleman in a suit and tie who sits down behind the plate
glass window in the prison's visitors' room doesn't seem to belong here.
But, despite his appearance, David Irving seems to have settled in quite
nicely. According to the prison's administration, Irving, who is here in
detention awaiting trial, gets along well with the other prisoners. If
only they could all be so polite, says a guard, clearly impressed by
Irving's model behavior.

Irving, 67, appears cheerful and focused and says he is being treated
well. Occasionally he does betray a penchant for hyperbole, though.
"Someone sent me ink, thank God," he says. Irving is writing his memoirs,
20 pages a day. There is little else to do for a writer behind bars, and
there's a tradition about writing while incarcerated. "Perhaps I should
call it 'Mein Krieg' ('My War')," says Irving, grinning on his side of the
plate glass divider. His daughter finds it "cool that Daddy is in prison,"
he adds, and one has the impression that Daddy himself still sees the
whole thing as part of an adventure. David Irving is a man marooned on the
fringes of society, but adventure is part of his business.

Before leaving London for Austria, he left behind 60 blank checks and
packed eight shirts, even though the trip was only scheduled to take two
days. He is always prepared for anything, says Irving, meaninfully raising
his bushy eyebrows. "Be prepared," the motto of the Boy Scouts, is
apparently also his motto.

He knew that there was a warrant for his arrest in Austria. In 1989, then
Chancellor Franz Vranitzky personally threatened Irving with immediate
arrest if he ever showed his face in Austria again. But the stubborn
Hitler apologist saw Vranitzky's threat as an invitation to return to
Austria as quickly as possible. "I come from a family of officers," he
growls from behind the plate glass, "we march towards cannon fire." But he
did make a mistake when it came to picking suitable shoes. Prisoners are
allowed to walk in the prison yard every day, but Irving has,
"unfortunately, only one pair of very expensive shoes," and they're slowly
falling apart.

Lust for Controversy

He plans to have his pinstripe suit sent to him for his trial on February
20. It's Irving's battle outfit, the same suit he had made by the most
expensive Savile Row tailor for his London trial six years ago. This
polite Anglo-Saxon treats Holocaust denial in the same way his countrymen
treat rugby: a sport for hooligans, played by gentlemen.

The self-confident, self-taught writer has always enjoyed causing uproar,
especially among mainstream historians, ever since the 1960s when he began
digging up documents written by Hitler's cohorts. Field Marshall Wilhelm
Keitel's memoirs, SS leader Adolf Eichmann's notes, Hitler's propaganda
minister Josef Goebbels' diaries -- the media-savvy author has been adept
at marketing his finds to the public and promoting his own works. His
sensationally written and extensively documented biographies of leading
Nazi figures were bestsellers up until the 1980s.

Despite admiration for Irving's detective skills, his work increasingly
came under fire after 1977, when his biography of Hitler was published. A
respected military historian until then, Irving quickly became Hitler's
willing discoverer, using his finds to prove the guilt of Himmler,
Heydrich and others while claiming that his revered Fhrer was entirely
blameless.

Irving, who was still giving lectures in the fading East Germany in 1990
under the title "A Briton fights for the honor of the Germans," chose
contemporary history and not politics as his pulpit. "Standing in front of
10,000 people who waited an entire day, and who are now sitting on hard
benches drinking their beer, waiting for you to speak -- that's the
ultimate reward," he said in 1992 during a speaking tour. Auschwitz expert
Robert van Pelt considers Irving hysterical. "He's quite a good speaker,
but he gets his energy from his audience, and he tells them what they want
to hear."

Far-Right Figurehead

David Irving denied the Holocaust, denied Hitler's guilt and mocked the
survivors of the Nazi concentration camps. Thanks to his derisive remarks
on what he called the Allies' "victors' view of history" and his snide
treatment of established historians, Irving soon became a figurehead for
right-wing extremists and a welcome agitator at events hosted by the
far-right German People's Union (DVU), where the eternally unteachable
could listen to him lecture on "what it was really like" in the "Third
Reich."

British historian David Cannadine has called Irving's books "abnormally
biased and irresponsibly sensationalist." In a court hearing in 2000,
fellow historian Richard Evans testified at length on Irving's clever
manipulation of his sources.

Nevertheless, the sheer wealth of material in Irving's books has always
made them a treasure trove for historians, and they can be found in many
German libraries. "Historians of the period between 1933 and 1945
appreciate his energy as a researcher more than they would ever care to
admit," says world-renowned American contemporary historian Gordon A.
Craig. "If we wanted to silence Irving, we would be paying a high price
for eliminating what we view as an annoyance."

The fact that his books turned into right-wing underground literature
available only through obscure publishing houses and on the Internet is
not just the result of his revisionist approach to history, but also his
provocative appearances in the neo-Nazi scene. Ever since the 1990s, when
it became clear that he could no longer convince any respected publisher
to publish his books, the historian has transformed himself into a
traveling salesman on all things relating to Hitler. His London apartment,
which the Sunday Telegraph has called a "one-man Hitler university," is
filled with Hitler, Gring and Goebbels monographs which he has published
himself and sells from the trunk of his car whenever he speaks in
basements and bars.

"They have burned my books," Irving sighs. A master of the insinuating
bluff, an expert at setting false trails, Irving adores the glitter of the
outrageous. He knows that burning books is a taboo, but conveniently
ignores the point that the publisher had to pulp some of his books for
legal reasons, and that that isn't the same as book-burning.

When David Irving entered the public arena in the 1960s, he quickly became
a star. According to historian Richard Evans, the early writings of the
"revisionists" were more of a "perverse form of entertainment" for
readers. Someone like Irving, who in fact had displayed considerable
talent as an author, was practically tailor-made for the talentless
pamphletists.

Smokescreens of Historical Detail

The vast quantities of archive material he deploys in his thick books is
intended to suggest objectivity. In truth, criticizes contemporary
historian Peter Hoffmann, this overwhelming wealth of detail is nothing
but a smokescreen.

British historian Paul Addison described Irving as "normally a giant when
it comes to research, but often a schoolboy when it comes to judgment." As
horrific as it sounds, there is reason to believe that he is not just
driven by the lucrative business of the Holocaust denial industry, but
also by a scurrilous and ultimately banal delight in provocation.

This delight is not uncommon among the upper classes in England, as Prince
Harry's recent appearance at a party wearing a swastika armband
demonstrates. Irving takes advantage of the considerable tolerance of his
countrymen, whose regard for freedom of opinion protects even the most
tasteless pronouncements of an eccentric.

It is no coincidence that a man like Irving comes from a country where
"Fhrer" jokes are still part of the standard repertoire of the tabloid
press, and where delight in provocation is considered acceptable even in
polite society. Irving undoubtedly has as many detractors in Britain as
anywhere else. But statements such as "more people were killed in the back
seat of Edward Kennedy's car in Chappaquiddick than in the gas chambers at
Auschwitz," with their blend of sexual innuendo and deliberate affront,
are a reflection of the trivial ignorance with which many a product of the
British boarding school system tries to show the world belongs to him. "He
is a megalomaniacal class tyrant," says Holocaust expert Deborah Lipstadt,
against whom Irving filed a spectacular lawsuit six years ago, at the end
of which, however, the judge in the case declared him an anti-Semite, a
racist and a liar.

"Yes, I did many silly things", says Irving simply, noting that the
British way of doing things isn't always polite.

Young Rebel

Irving, who grew up without a father, started rebelling against the
established order when he was a schoolboy. When he won a book award at
school, he asked for Hitler's "Mein Kampf" as his prize. It was the same
impetus that prompted him to drape a Soviet flag over the gate of his
school. He had merely intended to shock people, Irving told Britain's
Observer newspaper in 1992. "It was all in good fun, and when I write, I
try to introduce a bit of fun onto each page." In 1993, he told another
interviewer that he had no political agenda apart from enjoying seeing
"other historians make fools of themselves."

Irving is unaware of moral or even human contradictions. He is too amoral
to even understand that jokes such as the one about Kennedy's car are an
affront to the survivors of the Holocaust. Irving's understanding of
history is not unlike that of the Nazis. History is a panorama of eating
or being eaten. Only the strong can win, and Irving reserves his unabashed
admiration exclusively for the strong.

One of those people is "Bomber" Harris. In his first book, Irving turned
the world's attention to the horrors of the bombing of Dresden.
Nevertheless, he insists that Air Marshall Sir Arthur Harris was a great
man. "I'm talking about a commander. Like Dnitz," he explains, his eyes
flashing. "Someone who can send 20,000 young people to their deaths each
day is a great commander." Given these views, Irving's admiration for
Hitler comes as no great surprise.

Irving seems proud to answer questions through the prison's plate glass
window. Questions about everything. For example, why did he first call the
Hitler diaries forgeries at the legendary Stern press conference, only to
recant a short time later and tell a British newspaper that they were
genuine? "It was a gag," he is quick to say, "something like
entertainment. None of that had anything to do with contemporary history.
I wanted to see how the historians would react." Judging by Irving's
expression, he seems to believe that this kind of behavior is perfectly
normal, and that the humorless Germans are nothing but spoilsports.

Suddenly everything begins to make sense: the "Third Reich" as a
grandiose, second-hand adventure playground, the revisionists as playmates
and the material the stuff of adventure novels, the kind Irving used to
read as a child growing up in the country. In those days, in the 1940s in
the county of Essex near London, England wasn't a multicultural society,
the Empire still existed and a small boy with a dreamy look in his eyes
could spend hours listening to stories about his uncle, who was serving
far away with the Bengal Lancers.

Yearning for the Days of Empire

Irving is a monarchist, "of course." He mourns the Empire and the lost
security that an orderly class society once offered the white English
middle class he grew up in. He doesn't like the fact that England's
cricket team includes dark-skinned players, he hates the new world and he
despises Tony Blair's New Labour.

Only three months ago, he moved to a new apartment not far from Downing
Street "to provoke the establishment," but also because it was closer to
Buckingham Palace. "I enjoy watching soldiers march by each morning when I
look out the window of my apartment." The Austrians, says Irving
disdainfully, are merely jealous of the British monarchy.

How does he expect his upcoming trial to turn out? "I would be less
confident," says Irving innocently, "if I didn't know that the world's
intellectuals are on my side." He says that he has already received "many
letters of support."

A few days later, in a Vienna coffeehouse, his attorney, Elmar Kresbach,
opens his briefcase and pulls out a stack of letters he has received in
recent weeks. Kresbach can only shake his head when he thinks about the
bizarre material that's been clogging his mailbox ever since he became
Irving's defense attorney. "He doesn't understand it himself," says the
attorney, referring to his client, "and I believe that he too is becoming
fed up with the crazies."

Back at the prison, Irving growls: "It's ridiculous that someone should go
to prison for that." He says he is only responsible for his own books, and
that his Hitler biography is even available in the prison library. It's a
typical Irving maneuver: triumphantly, he presents a discovery, but
without revealing the complete truth, thereby drawing attention away from
the actual question. Shouldn't someone have to take responsibility for
what he tells a willing public in stifling back rooms and auditoriums? It
isn't Irving's books that landed him in prison, but his lectures --
sentences like this one, which he dictated to an Austrian reporter in
1989: "There were no gas chambers in Auschwitz. All witnesses who claim
otherwise are psychiatric cases." Indeed, the Vienna public prosecutor's
office plans to use tape recordings of some of Irving's appearances in
Austria as part of its indictment.

The Irving case is bizarre. "Yes, we did have a book by Mr. Irving in our
library," says prison warden Peter Prechtl, but adds that prison officials
removed the book from circulation "for security reasons" as soon as they
were made aware of it. It wasn't Irving's Hitler biography, but his book
about the 1956 Hungarian uprising. Prechtl himself has no idea why the
book should constitute a security risk.

Austrian Sensitivity

The Austrians' highly sensitive treatment of the brown Briton shows just
how delicate the matter is in Austrian politics. After Irving discovered
his books in the prison in Graz where he was being held previously and, as
was reported in the press, autographed them for prison guards, Vienna
officials wanted to play it safe. "Irving was dropped into their laps like
a hot potato," says one insider, "and now they're not sure what to do with
him."

The case ultimately exposes a certain irony: A Briton who expresses doubts
about the Holocaust is arrested in a country that knows full well that it
existed, but spent decades essentially ignoring it. In the past three
decades, not a single Nazi war criminal has been sentenced in the Alpine
republic, which once styled itself as "Hitler's first victim."

But, like any good Boy Scout, Irving is skilled at setting traps and
playing games with the Austrian judiciary and his liberal adversaries --
precisely those who, in the name of freedom of expression, now feel the
need to protest the imprisonment of a man whose views they deeply despise.
"If you had told me, a few months ago, that I would be demanding David
Irving's release one day," says Irving's sharpest critic, Deborah
Lipstadt, "I would have called you insane."

But the Holocaust historian doesn't want to see Irving become a martyr in
the name of freedom of speech. "I'm against censorship," she says, "no one
stands to benefit from throwing this guy into prison." The price Lipstadt
is paying for such liberalism? Germany's right-wing, extremist
"National-Zeitung" recently quoted her in an article titled "Worldwide
Protests against Irving's Arrest."

Shortly after his arrest, Irving announced, through his attorney, that he
no longer questions the existence of the gas chambers in Auschwitz,
claiming that newly-discovered documents have convinced him otherwise. One
can practically see the smokescreen rising from Irving's cell and hear
someone uttering the word "epiphany."

Irving's attorney, Elmar Kresbach, a confident and experienced criminal
defender who usually represents murderers and Mafia gangs, will highlight
his client's naivet and reformation when he appears before an
eleven-member panel of judges on February 20. Kresbach makes no secret of
his conviction that "in a free society, it must be possible to be able to
say something that is wrong and offensive without being criminally
prosecuted."

But Kresbach also wants to prevent his egotistical client from using the
trial as a soapbox. "He won't be saying much," says Kresbach, leaning back
in his chair as if to emphasize his point. "This is an Austrian jury court
and not some Holocaust discussion group."

Irving is playing a despicable game. The Austrians will make short work of
him.

(source: Der Spiegel)




IRAN:

Iran's anti-Holocaust stand angers Germany


The German government has condemned Iran's plan for a conference designed
to try to prove the Holocaust never happened.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has called the Holocaust a "myth."

The Iranian government announced plans for the conference last weekend and
said it would invite prominent Holocaust deniers to speak. Among those
mentioned were German neo-Nazi Horst Mahler, the Israeli journalist and
Christian convert Israel Shamir and the historian David Irving.

Politicians, especially in Germany, were up in arms at the idea of such a
conference, Deutsche Welle said.

"This is international anti-Semitism at work," said Gert Weisskirchen, the
foreign affairs spokesman for the Social Democratic Party in an interview
with German magazine Der Spiegel.

Werner Hoyer from the free-market liberal Free Democratic Party told Der
Spiegel such a meeting of Holocaust skeptics at a time of heightened
tensions over Iran's nuclear ambitions was a "dangerous spark in the
powder keg."

Shamir's Web state carried a post saying he had not been invited to the
conference, has "knowledge whether such a conference will take place at
all." The post said if an invitation is received "it will be considered
carefully."

(source: United Press International)