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News Headlines

Austria Imposes 3-Year Sentence on Notorious Holocaust Denier

David Irving pleads guilty, says Holocaust views have changed

David Irving says he has no choice but to admit charges of Holocaust denial

Irving Case tests Europe's free speech

Deborah Lipstadt wants him set free

Articles & Excerpts

Peter Kirstein: Respectable Historians Attend and Speak at Conferences Hosted by David Irving?

Deborah Lipstadt: C-Span's Mistake

Deborah Lipstadt: Holocaust Denial Is Alive and Well in the Middle East

Quotes

News Story (Guardian)

Last night Irving's partner Bente Hogh said he had brought his imprisonment on himself by going to Austria despite the ban. She said:"He was not jailed just for his views but because he's banned from Austria and still went. David doesn't take advice from anyone. He thought it was a bit of fun, to provoke a little bit."

Jesse Lemisch

An Austrian court has sentenced historian David Irving to three years in prison for Holocaust denial. This constitutes a moment of crisis for historians and in particular for the American Historical Association. How should historians react?

Irving's doctrines and his history are obnoxious. I suppose it's premature to reach a conclusion about yesterday's event this soon, but my first reaction is that it is simply horrifying to see a historian locked up for a bad, wrong, dishonest or evil interpretation or misuse of sources, and that this should be opposed.

Deborah Lipstadt

After having a long conversation with a reporter who was in the courtroom, I have learned that it seemed to him -- quite clearly so -- that the judge was really angry about Irving's claims to have" changed his views" as of the 1990s.

"The judge had read every page of every transcript of your trial. He knew the judgment. He knew the experts' findings," this reporter said to me.

The judge knew that in 2000 Irving was in court suing you. He knew that Irving's claims to have seen the light and to no longer be a denier as of the 1990s was rot and that Irving was playing with the court.

Once again, as he did at my trial, Irving seemed to behave in a way that said:"I can do whatever I want, say whatever I want and get away with it."

The problem is, he can't. While I may disagree with Holocaust denial laws, while I may be disturbed by the sentence, David Irving cannot seem to grasp that there are consequences to his actions.

The Austrian court thought otherwise.