Holocaust denial

Ukip suspends candidate over Holocaust comments

Marcus Dysch — Thu, 25 Apr 2013 13:41:23 +0100

Ukip has suspended a local election candidate over comments attributed to her which attacked Zionists and accused Jews of engineering the Second World War.

Comments appeared on Facebook in the name of Anna-Marie Crampton encouraging followers to "read the Protocols of Zion, all you need to know is in there and it's in their own words".

Israel was "created with the full support and backing of the duped citizens of the world," the comments claimed.

The Facebook account from which the remarks were posted in February also carries images of Ms Crampton posing alongside Ukip leader Nigel Farage.

In a statement Ukip said it was "appalled" by the comments and had suspended her from running as a party candidate.

Ms Crampton responded to the news by tweeting: "I'm not antisemetic. I never said I do not believe in the Holocaust. I've clearly been 'trolled'. I do post on Zionism as a political movement.

"Further, my great-grandmother was Jewish on my mother's side."

A Ukip spokeswoman said: "Anti-Zionist conspiracy theory is not welcome in Ukip. Indeed, we are confused as to why a party like Ukip would be seen by anyone as a suitable vehicle for someone holding these sorts of views.

"While she will still be on the ballot paper as a Ukip candidate we want voters in her district to realise that she is not representing the party and the people of east Sussex.

"Rest assured that her views are not held by the party and do not reflect the views of our other excellent candidates.

"While we have vigorous selection procedures in place for Westminster and European elections, in these county council elections we have to some degree had to rely on good judgment and goodwill of our local branches who wanted to ensure that all Ukip supporters had a candidate to vote for."

Ms Crampton is standing in next week's elections in the Crowborough ward of East Sussex County Council.

The posts on the social networking site claimed that: "The Second World Wide War was engineered by the Zionist Jews and financed by the banksters to make the general public all over the world feel so guilty and outraged by the Holocaust that a treaty would be signed to create the State of Israel as we know it today."

They added: "Only the Zionists could sacrifice their own in the gas chambers."

Further posts claimed Zionists were "psychopaths" who "hide behind and use the Jews. It was thanks to them that six million Jews were murdered in the war".

The Brighton Argus newspaper said it had made repeated attempts to contact Ms Crampton for a comment but that she was unavailable.

A Twitter account in Ms Crampton's name has repeatedly featured links to items critical of Israeli policy towards the Palestinians.

Hungary court orders denier to visit Auschwitz

Nissan Tzur — Thu, 07 Feb 2013 22:00:00 +0000

A court in Hungary has handed a Holocaust-denier an unconventional punishment.

Gyorgy Nagy, 42, was ordered to visit either Hungary’s Holocaust memorial centre, Auschwitz or Yad Vashem in Israel.

Nagy, an unemployed computer technician, is the first Hungarian convicted under the country’s new Holocaust denial law which came into effect in February 2010. The Budapest court also gave him an 18-month suspended jail sentence.

If Nagy chooses to visit the local Holocaust memorial centre, he will have to make three trips and write down his thoughts and observations after the visits.

Nagy was arrested at a political rally in Budapest in 2011 when police noticed he was holding a banner with the words: “The Shoah didn’t happen.”

In the 2010 law, the Hungarian government made denial of the genocide committed by the Nazi regime a crime punishable by a maximum of three years in prison.

The bill to ban denial or questioning of the Holocaust was submitted by Attila Mesterhazy, chairman of the Hungarian Socialist Party.

Despite the new law, Hungary’s current prime minister, Viktor Orban, has been recently sharply criticised by many Jewish organisations for pandering to nationalists and tolerating antisemitism.

In one of the most notable cases, Mr Orban’s government was accused of having approved the naming of a park in Gyomro — a small town on the outskirts of Budapest — after Miklos Horthy, the country’s wartime leader and a close ally of Adolf Hitler.

Mr Orban has also been accused of failing to condemn antisemitic statements made in recent months by some members of far-right party Jobbik.

Bishop convicted for Holocaust denial

Sandy Rashty — Thu, 17 Jan 2013 14:35:21 +0000

A British bishop has been fined around £1500 for denying the Holocaust.

Richard Williamson, 72, was convicted of incitement on Wednesday after he denied the Holocaust during a television interview in 2008.

According to the report on Dpa news, Mr Williamson told a Swedish TV station, based in Germany, that Jews were not killed in gas chambers during the Second World War.

Holocaust denial is a crime in Germany and Mr Williamson was convicted by a German administrative court after he appealed an earlier conviction in 2010.

He did not attend court proceedings.

Australian Holocaust denier's defamation case fails

Dan Goldberg — Thu, 08 Nov 2012 09:30:00 +0000

An Australian judge has thrown out a defamation case by a convicted Holocaust denier against a Jewish leader.

Federal Court judge David Yates ruled against Adelaide’s Fredrick Toben last week in the case he brought against Jeremy Jones, a former president of the Executive Council of Australian Jewry.

In his judgment, Justice Yates described Toben’s case as “an abuse of the court’s process” and ordered that the proceedings be stayed permanently.

The judge noted that Dr Toben’s defamation case was only lodged in May 2012 — two weeks after he failed in an attempt to avoid being taxed on Mr Jones’s costs he was ordered to pay from a previous contempt-of-court ruling.

“It was that circumstance which apparently spurred the applicant to commence the present proceeding,” the judge wrote.

He also ordered Toben to pay Mr Jones’s costs.

Toben claimed he had been defamed by Mr Jones in an article which was published in the Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council magazine in August 2009.

Toben alleged that the article accused him of being an antisemite who believed the Holocaust was a fraud.
“The important thing is that the matter is now over,” Mr Jones said.

Toben, who was recently declared bankrupt, was arrested at Heathrow airport in 2008 and remanded in custody for continuing to publish antisemitic material on his Adelaide Institute website in defiance of a court order. The following year he was jailed in Australia for three months for contempt of the court order.

Catholic group expels Holocaust denier, Bishop Williamson

Thu, 01 Nov 2012 11:21:38 +0000

Holocaust denier Bishop Richard Williamson has been expelled from the niche Catholic group of which he was a leading member.

The Society of St Pius X (SSPX) said that it took the step because Bishop Williamson had “distanced himself from the management and the government of the SSPX for several years” and for “refusing to show due respect and obedience to his lawful superiors”.

The SSPX is a breakaway group from the Catholic Church which opposes the Church’s modernisation and liberalisation. Bishop Williamson was in the centre of a media storm in 2009 when he denied the existence of the gas chambers in the Holocaust in a television interview, just before the excommunication bans on him and the three other bishops of the SSPX were lifted. When ordered by the Vatican to recant his denial, Williamson apologised for any misunderstanding but came significantly short of retracting his statements.

Ronald Lauder, president of the World Jewish Congress, welcomed Bishop Williamson’s expulsion, but said it was “too little, too late.”

Holocaust denying Bishop banned from Catholic group

Sahar Zivan — Wed, 24 Oct 2012 16:58:26 +0100

Holocaust denier Bishop Richard Williamson has been expelled from the niche Catholic group of which he was a leading member.

The Society of St Pius X (SSPX) said in a statement that it took the step because Bishop Williamson had "distanced himself from the management and the government of the SSPX for several years" and for "refusing to show due respect and obedience to his lawful superiors".

The SSPX is a breakaway group from the Catholic Church which opposes the Church's modernisation and liberalisation. Recently Pope Benedict attempted to bring the SSPX back into the main Catholic Church.

Negotiations between the two broke down over the SSPX's refusal to accept the legitimacy of the Second Vatican Council which brought in reforms and modernised the Church, especially regarding its recognition of other Christian denominations and Judaism as legitimate faiths.

Bishop Williamson was in the centre of a media storm in 2009 when he denied the existence of the gas chambers in the Holocaust in a television interview, just before the excommunication bans on him and the three other bishops of the SSPX were lifted. When ordered by the Vatican to recant his denial, Williamson apologised for any misunderstanding but came significantly short of retracting his statements.

Ronald Lauder, president of the World Jewish Congress, welcomed Bishop Williamson's expulsion, but said it was "too little, too late."

Mr Lauder added: "This is a decision the SSPX leadership should have taken years ago, when the cleric openly denied the existence of gas chambers. The reasons now given for Williamson's dismissal do not mention the damage this man has caused by spreading invective against Jews and others, be it from the pulpit, via his weekly newsletter and in his statements to the media."

Estonian company apologises over Auschwitz gas advert

Thu, 30 Aug 2012 17:15:43 +0100

The Estonian GasTerm Eesti company has apologised after using an image of the iconic gates of Auschwitz to advertise the firm’s gas and heating services.

The photograph of the infamous inscription "Arbeit macht frel," or "work makes you free" appeared on GasTerm’s website on August 23 with the caption "gas heating – flexible, convenient and effective "

After receiving complaints, the photograph was removed from the website on August 24 and replaced by a gas burner. A spokesman for the company issued a statement: "If the image placed here earlier has caused any inconvenience, please accept our sincere apologies”.

Company director Sven Linros said: “We wanted to clarify that the CH4 gas which the company uses is not toxic and can be used to heat buildings, even those with such a sad history.”

But the Israel -based director of the Simon Wiesenthal Centre, Dr Ephraim Zuroff, said : “It is an outrageous lack of taste that is passable in a country in which there is relatively little knowledge and understanding of the crimes committed in the Holocaust.”

Romanian PM makes 'Holocaust denier' a minister

Petru Clej — Thu, 09 Aug 2012 11:51:38 +0100

The Romanian senator Dan Sova has been promoted by Prime Minister Victor Ponta to minister for parliamentary relations, only five months after being demoted from the job of party spokesman for downplaying the Holocaust.

Mr Sova had been one of the rising stars of the Social Democratic Party (PSD) until last March, when Mr Ponta sacked him from the job of PSD spokesman following a public outcry over a television interview in which he said that a pogrom in the city of Iasi on June 1941 left only 23 or 24 Jews dead.

During the interview, Mr Sova claimed that the Romanian pro-Fascist government had no involvement in the massacre and that it was carried out only by German soldiers.

He was sent by Mr Ponta to the US Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington to brush up on Jewish history after his remarks.

Mr Sova apologised for his comments and, shortly afterwards, resumed his rapid ascent to the top of Romanian politics.

He was one of the main PSD speakers in parliament last month during the debate which resulted in President Traian Basescu’s impeachment.

European Union leaders and large sections of the international media have criticised the way in which Mr Ponta and his Liberal partners within the ruling Social Liberal Union (USL) rushed through Mr Basescu’s impeachment and other legislative changes, which the opposition branded as “a constitutional putsch”.

Mr Sova’s appointment will raise further question marks over the democratic credentials of the Ponta government.

In an interview with Romanian TV, Aurel Vainer MP, chairman of the Jewish Communities Federation of Romania, said about Mr Sova’s nomination: “This is over the top. I feel like I should wear a black armband.”

Golden Dawn leader denies gas chambers of Holocaust

Jennifer Lipman — Tue, 15 May 2012 09:20:29 +0100

The leader of the neo-fascist party that won seats in the Greek parliament for the first time earlier this month has denied some of the fundamental facts of the Holocaust.

Golden Dawn, which now claims 21 parliamentarians and whose members are known for giving Nazi salutes and for their staunchly anti-immigrant stance, is led by Nikolaos Mihaloliakos. According to Reuters Mr Mihaloliakos told an interviewer on Sunday that he did not believe that six million Jews were murdered by the Nazis. He described the figure as an "exaggeration".

He said: "There were no ovens, this is a lie ... there were no gas chambers either."

Holocaust denial is not illegal in Greece, but a government spokesman said he categorically condemned Mr Mihaloliakos's remarks.

"They distort history and offend the memory of millions of Holocaust victims," said Pantelis Kapsis.

Golden Dawn's success has sent shockwaves around Greece's Jewish community, which is estimated to include several thousand people. The Central Board of Jewish Communities in Greece called it a "serious blow" to Greek democracy.

Supporters of the Party were left unable to access its website on Monday, after the blog host WordPress removed the Golden Dawn page because of a "violation" of its terms of service.

Ambassador: we must all be witnesses

Martin Bright — Thu, 26 Apr 2012 14:35:45 +0100

Israel's ambassador to the UK, Daniel Taub, has called on the Jewish community to build on the success of this year's March of the Living and boost the numbers of British young people attending the event in the future. He is also understood to be keen to attract significant numbers from the Israeli community resident in Britain.

This year's 25th anniversary march saw 11,000 people walk from Auschwitz to Birkenau on April 19 to mark Yom Hashoah. The event, established to oppose the growing tide of Holocaust denial, has grown into a major international phenomenon, attracting participants from 40 other countries.

March of the Living UK has been operating for just three years and 180 people travelled to Poland for the 2012 event. Canada, which has been involved from the beginning of the initiative, sends around 900 people. March of the Living UK aims to rival the French contingent of 500 over the next few years

MOTL UK chairman Scott Saunders said he was particularly struck by the ability of the event to bring people together from across the British Jewish community. "We had 180 participants from across the breadth of the UK, a complete cross-section of our community, coming from 12 different student and youth movements. When I heard them singing in the Kupah Synagogue in Krakow together as one British community, I realised something unique was happening."

Mr Taub spoke to the British delegation at the memorial to the victims of the Auschwitz-Monowitz labour camp, who worked at the IG Farben chemical factory. He said: "I urge every member of the community to participate in the March of the Living. As we approach the moment when the Shoah will cease to be memory and will become history, it is crucial that we, too, become a generation of witnesses."

In response to a JC campaign, a small ceremony was held to pay tribute to the British prisoners of war held at Auschwitz, the British Jewish soldiers captured by the Nazis, and the hundreds of Jews from mandate-era Palestine fighting in the British army who ended up in German hands.

Mr Saunders called on young people with research experience to help trace documents held in archives around the world which might shed light on the Auschwitz POW camp and the role played by British soldiers in alerting the War Office to the Holocaust.