He wrote at the time that his “guests” on the trip “voiced interest in… anomalies in the disinfestation chambers (now re-labelled as ‘gas chambers’), which have wartime blue Zyklon stains on the walls, postwar wire-reinforced glass in the windows, and carbon-dioxide cylinders still on display in the ‘poison gas’ store.”
He offered a similar tour, which included a visit to the Treblinka death camp, in 2010.
Mr Irving has published videos online of him speaking at the sites on past tours. They appear with the message: “Viewers in some countries may find these movies inaccessible, as Jewish groups hostile to Real History have blocked them, disagreeing with your right to see the locations and make up your own mind.”
News of his latest plans led to anger from both Jews and non-Jews around the world, with Naftali Bennett, Israel’s Minister for the Diaspora, writing to Poland’s ambassador to Israel urging that Irving and his companions be prevented from entering the country, and “certainly not to the camps and other sites of memorial to the millions… who were murdered in that dark period of history.”
The minister said that given Mr Irving’s “record of abhorrent statements and outright lies about the history of the Holocaust, it is quite clear that he intends to use this opportunity to spread further falsehoods and vitriolic narrative.”
Mr Irving lost an infamous libel suit he brought against Professor Deborah Lipstadt in 2000, after the academic accused him of being a Holocaust denier, falsifier, and bigot.
