As has already been widely reported, Holocaust denier “historian” David Irving has been sentenced to three years prison for denying the Holocaust.
The trial and verdict have provided a number of interesting talking points, not the least being the manner in which Irving summarily dispensed of his so-called “principles” to save his hide.
Irving, 67, told reporters he now acknowledges that the Nazis systematically slaughtered Jews during World War II.
“History is like a constantly changing tree,” he said as an eight-member jury and a panel of three judges prepared to hear charges that could put him behind bars for up to 10 years.
Irving, handcuffed and wearing a navy blue suit, arrived at the court carrying a copy of one of his most controversial books — “Hitler’s War,” which challenges the extent of the Holocaust.
“I made a mistake when I said there were no gas chambers at Auschwitz,” Irving told the court, speaking in German. But he insisted he never wrote a book about the Holocaust, which he called “just a fragment of my area of interest.””
—-Irving had tried to win his provisional release on $24,000 bail, but a Vienna court refused, saying it considered him a flight risk.
Within two weeks of his arrest, he asserted through his lawyer that he had come to acknowledge the existence of Nazi-era gas chambers.
Nice try.
Another interesting talking point to emerge from this verdict is the reaction of Professor Deborah Lipstadt, who Irving sued for libel in 2002 – and lost. She is not pleased with the verdict.
Once again David Irving has brought his house of cards down on himself. First he sued me for calling him a Holocaust denier and ended up with his reputation in tatters.
Then he went off to Austria to tweak the Austrian authorities by testing the law and he got himself arrested.
Nonetheless, given how I feel about the efficacy of censorship laws and laws against Holocaust denial, I understand the jury’s inclinations — they were Austrian after all — but I am not pleased.
This does not seem like a good thing.
Update: The trial has also brought back into the spotlight vehement anti-Semite and Irving supporter Michele Renouf, a former Australian beauty queen who once stated that Judaism is a “repugnant and hateful religion”, yet denied she was anti-Jew (let me guess…some of her best friends are Jewish -ed.).
Former Australian beauty queen and controversial London socialite Michele Renouf has caused a stir at historian David Irving’s holocaust-denial trial in Vienna, protesting on his behalf.
Lady Renouf – a former wife of the late New Zealand financier Sir Frank Renouf – has long been an advocate of right-wing views.
She arrived at the trial of the British historian today and made her views plain to assembled media, calling for the bodies of “so-called Holocaust victims to be exhumed to see whether they died from typhoid or gas”.
—-She told reporters: “I am here to free David Irving and free Austria from this totalitarian law.”
—-Lady Renouf praised Irving for “standing up to the Zionists” before a member of the Austrian press shouted at her: “Do you think your British flag entitles you to bring your Nazi propaganda into this court?”
Oh yeah, one other thing about Renouf. Like Irving and most other anti-Semites, she is a demonstrable liar.
Lady Renouf is probably best known in Sydney and Melbourne as the third and final marital fling of the late New Zealand financier, Sir Frank “The Bank” Renouf, almost 30 years her senior.
Their union collapsed in 1991 after only a few months, when Sir Frank reportedly discovered the then Countess Griaznoff was a truckie’s daughter from The Entrance, on the NSW central coast and not a Russian noblewoman. He later described the marriage as a “nasty accident”.
