Should David Irving, Holocaust denier, be allowed to run tours to Poland?

Where has Irving ever said that he hated/hates Jews?

He don't like'em
youtu.be/0rBCst4hph0

He was just being candid there but he has categorically denied hating Jews in the past. At least he tries to prove his points. A futile activity it would appear but he goes beyond Ahmedinejad who doesn't even want to reveal his research.

I don't think this guy knows much else apart from hate.
I can see why some members of this forum would like him but I doubt if even they'll fork out the cash for his special tour.

But here is something he should know (probably does and needs the attention):
"He who publicly and contrary to facts contradicts the crimes mentioned in Article 1, clause 1 shall be subject to a fine or a penalty of deprivation of liberty of up to three years. The judgment shall be made publicly known."

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laws_against_Holocaust_denial#Poland

and

"the European Union has issued a directive to combat racism and xenophobia, which makes provision for member states criminalising Holocaust denial, with a maximum prison sentence of between one and three years."

Just a small contribution to the debate;

Jewish professor Noam Chomsky defends holocaust revisionists and says;

"I have been informed that Vincent Reynouard has been charged and imprisoned for violation of the loi Gayssot and that a petition for his release is in circulation. I know nothing about Monsieur Reynouard but I regard this law as an absolutely illegitimate infringment of the principle of a free society, as it is been understood since the Enlightenment. As a consequence of this law the state has been granted the right to determine historical truth and to punish anyone who opposes its edicts. This is a principle that smacks of the sinister days of Stalinism and Nazism."

document.no/2010/09/chomsky_forsvarer_holocaust-be.html

DariuszTelka

Here's more about Irving.


theaustralian.com.au/news/opinion/dresden-myths-brought-to-book/story-e6frg6zo-1225842520108

A scientific researcher who periodically fabricated facts would be discredited and never allowed to publish anything in a scientific journal.

Well, Poles love him as he even had a tea named after him. OK, off to Radom :)

Do we love him? :) My father's uncle barely survived Oswiecim (he was a Gentile Pole btw). Anyone who denies the Nazi German death rampage in Poland has to be deluded and insults every Pole. (Hey I was born in Radom - still have an apartment there).

Who got 250 000 pounds to appear in the Irving vs Lipstadt trial....along with other experts who also received handsome payoffs of similar amount...now, what was Evans going to say for that much money?

Irving put his personal fortune into his trials, while Lipstadt and others get their expenses paid by wealthy supporters. Even if you have the truth on your side, if your opponent has unlimited funds and can get every person or expert from across the globe...you will have issues fighting them!

Here's a link to the Sunday Times, where a journalist picks apart holocaust survivor Simon Wiesenthals many lies. If he lies about one thing, it's ok. If he lies about two things, one should be weary. If he lies about three things, one shouldn't trust him. Now, should we trust Simon Wiesenthal after all these lies have been exposed?

entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/books/book_extracts/article6718913.ece

The Jewish Chronicle responds with this article by Associate editor of The Times, Daniel Finkelstein;

"It is right to expose Wiesenthal";

thejc.com/comment/columnists/it-right-expose-wiesenthal

I say, keep an open mind.

DariuszTelka

"Have trusted" would be more appropriate, since the gentleman died a few years ago, but for holocaust deniers, accuracy seems less important than the ideology of hate.

Shortcomings or not, Dr Wiesenthal managed to bring some of the twentieth century's most despicable individuals to justice. Mr Irving (who is NOT a historian, by the way) just seeks to profit from upsetting holocaust survivors and their families, while at the same time enjoying the attention he gets from racist groups.

Sorry, I forgot to add wink marks. If he is merely contesting numbers, then ok. However, he is sticking it in the faces of those that lost their lives unnecessarily.

Are we talking about islam now, jonni?


So, what's with the double standards? David Irving has some shortcomings too, but his are not accepted. However Wiesenthals are? They both wrote books, they both lied.


No nazis/racists care about David Irving, he is too complicated and sophisticated for them. He writes books that are 500+ pages.

DariuszTelka

Interesting...I had no idea...

spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,716216,00.html


I really thought he got some...

Well he did - he certainly got some.

much like other numbers bandied about with regards to ww2, this one may be a bit exaggerated as well..

Yes, clearly we should nail Wiesenthal to the wall for his efforts to hunt down your heroes and we should bow down to Irving for his efforts to excuse and rehabilitate your heroes.

It's such a pity that you weren't born a couple of generations earlier: you could have been another of the Poles who trained at Trawniki before serving at the Aktion Reinhard camps.

Another weird comment - have you finished the treatment by the way?


Tell us then.


Not accepted by whom?


And who buys them? And how would you know what "nazis/racists care about"?
We're all ears.

Coming from the man who hates racists/nazis but accepts islam....hmm.


I think it would be more interesting to hear your explanation.


By you?


It used to be universities, libraries, governements, the military, history teachers, people who are interested in history in general. You think "racists" or "nazis" buy 50 dollar books that are 800-900 pages thick? I know both racist, nazis, muslims, mormons, catholics, leftists, communists...and I've seen their book collections. But you do know that Mein Kampf is a best seller outside of Europe? Especially in the muslim world. Now...you want to explain that?

I know a lot of things, jonni!


If someone who pretends to represent the truth and is universally accepted as one who speaks it, is caught lying, then he should be exposed. Nothing more sinister than that, Harry.

It's not about his hunting of war criminals. It's the fact that he was caught lying, over and over again. And his books are used at schools, in using facts about the holocaust, making movies etc. Wouldn't you want the truth, rather than a lie, when looking at history?

Irving may be a liar, a cheat a con-man, who knows. But so is Wiesenthal, so why not treat them as such? Why give one medals and the other a prison sentence? Irving might be a great friend to someone, a great father, an organ donor for that sake, does that excuse his lies? I don't think so.

Again, the hate, Harry. You need to relax, take a pill. Or something.

DariuszTelka

What is the name of the foremost authority on the Holocaust? I can't remember his surname. It began with R, I think. Surely he could dispel the contentions of Irving!? Irving has challenged many to come forward openly and contest him but there aren't many takers.

uncyclopedia.wikia.com/wiki/Adolf_Hitler

>^..^<

M-G (busy)

Well... You're he one defending the extreme position of the guy the thread's about.


Irving's books?


Someone musy buy them - though Irving's books don't quite fit that profile.


And most of them either distasteful, imaginary, or both.


Because one of them was a holocaust survivor who dedicated his life to righting wrong; and the other a self-publicist and demagogue with exxtreme views who makes his money as an apologist for the Third Reich.

Lol...

He wasn't who I had in mind ;)

I heard David Irving is gay and has one testicle..

Here's an interview with Franz Suchomel, one of the guards in Treblinka. If you understand German, you can see that Irving is a dangerous fool, like I stated before. There are seven parts of it and he explains en detail how it was indeed pssbl to gass and burn all the alledged victims. And Auschwitz gas chambers were even bigger than the ones in Treblinka as the Nazis learned from previous mistakes. David Irving may have been a meticulous researcher, but he interpreted the findings in a wrong way.

Edit: I see they have added English subs to it now. I watched it some time ago without, that's why.

>^..^<

M-G (go see all 7 parts and you will know)

Interesting, thanks for that. But I don't fully agree with your post:


He doesn't, actually. He says they were gassing 12-15000 people a day, at the peak of operations, and that's all about numbers. He says nothing about burning the corpses, except for that pit for selected old and ill people.

This is a testimony about the fact, not about the extent of it. I don't see this having any bearing on Irving's case.

I don't know if you have seen all seven parts of it, but at one point he talks about a pile of corpses lying around behind the gas chamber in the midst of summer. As you can guess what happens to corpses lying in the blistering sun, nobody wanted to touch that pile, not even with a pole (no pun intended). The Jewish workers said they'd rather be shot dead than to have to handle those corpses. And after that he mentions that the Germans had to pick those corpses up themselves and burn them. It's been a while since I saw the interview, but I seem to remember that he mentions the burning somewhere to the end of the interview. But like I said, I haven't seen it in a while.

But then again, why is the burning so important? If he states that they were gassing 12 to 15000 ppl a day, the point has been made, or am I shooting in the dark here?


I think his testimony explains very well the extend of things going on (in Treblinka), but there are more of those interviews. If I have time, I will post them as well.


This guy was a perpetrator, he actually says they were doing what Irving denies they did. That's the bearing in respect to Irvings claims.

Edit: this interview is actually part of Claude Lanzmann's Shoah. If you get the chance, you really should watch it. It's, I think, about 5 hrs long though.

>^..^<

M-G (time for a beer)

Talk about Holocaust deniers:
...
A good Catholic, btw...

>^..^<

M-G (if this all just didn't happen, where did my family go?)

I've seen it all. He doesn't mention burning here, only clearing up the place.


I am not accusing you of lying. This burning is what I mentioned already, of selected ill and old people, who would slow the procedure. They had to 'process' around 4000 in 2-3 hours, so it was on the run.


You said 'he explains how it was possible to kill and burn all the people', I pointed out he doesn't.

Disposal of corpses is important. I can visualise gassing 4000 people in 4-5 chambers during, say, 1.5-2 hours, even. Depends of the size of the chambers, but these were new ones, significantly bigger than the old ones of capacity 50-60 people. But then you have to take them away, make a pile, burn or cover with soil. This is a problem.

Let's choose easy numbers: 15000 a day, 15 people in one cubic meter, makes 1000 cubic meters. Pit with 2 meters' deep pile of bodies is then 20 by 25 meters in size, 2.5 meters deep, makes 1250 m3. Has to be dug out every day, if disposal is by burying. Who's done it?

There were 200 Jews in the camp, as labour. If all of them were used, it makes abut 6 cubic meters of soil for every one of them, daily, to shovel out from a deep pit. Hardly imaginable. Then it were not 200 available, as somebody had to transport the bodies during 2-3 hours, and, as he says, the southern gas chambers were not used as being too far from the disposal ground, so this was a real problem. From the map it seems the distance difference would be some 100 meters... Somebody had to move the surplus soil away, or we'd see mounds, like on ordinary simple graves - even less people left for digging. 50(?) were busy camouflaging the 'funnel', 20 at the trians and along the 'ascension' road.

If the disposal was by burning, you need several pits operating at once, but the new ones dug out every week or two only, so this problem seems solved, probably. But then you need fuel, loads of it, bodies don't burn well - and no mention about it. And still, after every week or two the distance to transport bodies increases by about 50 meters.

So, at this rate, Treblinka chokes after about a month. 30*15000 = 450000.

Hold on... in that place he mentions that the gaschambers on the south side were not used, because they were too far from the disposal ground, he might've mentioned here about burning (or burying), I don't remember now...


Not at all. We do not know how long it lasted, and what were the numbers off-peak, so this testimony on its own doesn't say much about the extent. Treblinka is about 800000 victims.

Of course you can argue with my estimates, even if they are quite conservative. But that's the point of it, freedom to argue.


I guess there are more. This particular one Irving would disregard as worthless, and I already can see the points he'd make.


No, this one says they were gassing people with exhaust gas, for unspecified period of time, and mentions not the Endloesnug question. Irving doesn't deny extermination as such, he questions numbers, Zyklon B, and extent to which it was a planned action. His estimate of Holocaust victims is about 3 mln.

Moreover, if you base your argument on witnesses, you miss the target. Irving regards testimonies as the least reliable of all sources, and not without reason.


I've heard too much of it to consider watching it any time soon.


His bishop calls him 'antisemitic'.

They were called 'Ukrainians' by Poles for a reason, you know.

As for Irving - he's what I call an antisemite not conscious of his antisemitism. The one who THINKS that he's not prejudiced but whenever he's presented with contradictory facts he always chooses to believe the one which is unfavourable to Jews. It could be said that he is to Jews what Harry is to Poles ;)

Update to this proposed visit. He will be allowed in to Auschwitz, but watched very closely.