_(english).jpg)
Funny people, the Austrians. If you're Kurt Waldheim -- a former Nazi military officer linked to a genocidal massacre during World War II -- they elect you president. But if you're David Irving -- a British author who claimed that there never was a Nazi genocide during World War II -- they throw you in the slammer.
On second thought, not funny at all. Austria disgraced itself when it elected Waldheim president in 1986, apparently unconcerned by the revelation that he had served in a German military unit responsible for mass murder in the Balkans and been listed after the war as a wanted criminal by the UN War Crimes Commission. In a very different way it disgraced itself again last week, when a Vienna court sentenced Irving, a racist and an anti-Semite, to three years in prison for denying that the Nazis annihilated 6 million European Jews.
Irving is a man of great intellectual gifts who devoted his life to a grotesque and evil project: rehabilitating the reputation of Hitler and the Third Reich. Necessarily, that meant denying the Holocaust and ridiculing those who suffered in it, and Irving has long done so with relish. "I don't see any reason to be tasteful about Auschwitz. It's baloney, it's a legend," he told a Canadian audience in 1991. "There are so many Auschwitz survivors going around -- in fact the number increases as the years go past, which is biologically very odd to say the least -- I'm going to form an association of Auschwitz Survivors, Survivors of the Holocaust, and Other Liars."
Presumably Irving had in mind people like my father, whose arm bears to this day the number A-10502, tattooed there in blue ink on May 28, 1944, the day he and his family were transported to Auschwitz. My father's parents, David and Leah Jakubovic, and his youngest brother and sister, Alice, 8, and Yrvin, 10, were not tattooed; Jews deemed too old or too young to work were sent immediately to the gas chambers. His teenage siblings, Zoltan and Franceska, were tattooed and, like him, put to work as slave laborers. Zoltan was killed within days; Franceska lasted a few months. Of the seven members of the Jakubovic family sent to Auschwitz in the spring of 1944, only my father was alive in the spring of 1945.
He is a repugnant, hate-filled liar, but as a matter of law and public policy, Irving's sentence is deplorable.
So on a personal level, the prospect of David Irving spending his next three years in a prison cell is something over which I will lose no sleep. He is a repugnant, hate-filled liar, who even as a child (so his twin brother told the Telegraph, a British daily) was enamored of the Nazis and had a pronounced cruel streak.
But as a matter of law and public policy, Irving's sentence is deplorable. The opinions he expressed are vile, and his arguments about the Holocaust -- perhaps the most comprehensively researched and documented crime in history -- are ludicrous. But governments have no business criminalizing opinions and arguments, not even those that are vile or ludicrous. To be sure, freedom of speech is not absolute; laws against libel, death threats, and falsely shouting fire in a crowded theater are both reasonable and necessary. But free societies do not throw people in prison for giving offensive speeches or spouting historical lies.
Austria, the nation that produced Hitler and cheered the Anschluss, may well believe that its poisoned history requires a strong antidote. Punishing anyone who "denies, grossly trivializes, approves, or seeks to justify" the Holocaust or other Nazi crimes may seem a small price to pay to keep would-be totalitarians and hatemongers at bay. But a government that can make the expression of Holocaust denial a crime today can make the expression of other offensive opinions a crime tomorrow.
Americans, for whom the First Amendment is a birthright, should understand this instinctively. "If there is any principle of the Constitution that more imperatively calls for attachment than any other it is the principle of free thought," wrote Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. in 1929. "Not free thought for those who agree with us, but freedom for the thought that we hate."
It is popular in some circles to argue that the United States should do certain things -- adopt single-payer health insurance, abolish capital punishment, etc. -- to conform to the practice in other democracies. Those who find that a persuasive argument might consider that Irving is behind bars today because Austria doesn't have a First Amendment. Neither do Belgium, the Czech Republic, France, Germany, Israel, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, or Switzerland -- all of which have made Holocaust denial a crime.
"Freedom for the thought we hate" is never an easy sell, but without it there can be no true liberty. David Irving is a scurrilous creep, but he doesn't belong in prison. Austria should find a way to set him free -- not for his sake, but for Austria's.
What do you think? Let us know using the comment section below.
(85) Anonymous , April 21, 2006
Those who do not know history...
I find this very disturbing..There is a saying that says 'Those who do not know history are doomed to repeat it...' Remember who has 'fallen' as a result of WW2 and those who were the victims..for it was by the victims' pain and suffering we have the state of Israel..our homeland.
(84) Jose Pineda , April 3, 2006
Couldn't agree more
I for one completely agree with the author. Some things Irving says are indeed worth investigating. He has profound knowledge about the WW2, and he is partly right when he says investigating about Holocaust has turned into something of a taboo.
In the end, I think people like Irving SHOULD NOT be sent to jail merely for expressing their extremely unneutral points of view about Shoa - that sends a bad message to neo-nazis over there: that their ideas can't be fought intelectually, that their hatered and lies can't be put down with FACTS. That people like Irving need to be put to jail for expressing what the powers-that-be describe as "bad ideas" only reinforce neo-nazis self-perception.
No, Irving may be self-delusional and opinionated to the extreme, but he must be shut up with arguments about hard facts, not with a legal fight. Otherwise, Austrian law is only making a martyr for these people.
By the way, Simon Wiesenthal once wrote in his book "Justice, not vengeance" that he felt sometimes Holocaust surviving Jews such as him didn't remember they weren't alone in the camps. He felt not enough was done especially for Gypsies, who still are regarded as less valuable than garbage in most Western countries and who he felt have not received as much compensation nor help from governments as Jews, Jehovah's Witnesses or Poles have...
(83) Trevor SPILL , March 16, 2006
As a non-Jew and a Christian, I can understand the absolute anger, hatred and repulsion many Jews have for a man like David Irving. It is hurtful beyond belief to listen to his theories about the Holocaust, when Jewish people have family members who have suffered terribly and some who have died.
As someone not personally involved, can I offer my reflections? Ultimately, God is his judge and we can only hand this kind of person over to God, who alone can handle our understandable anger. Perhaps one day he will repent of all he has said, but until that day happens, we can release all the angry emotions we feel to our Heavenly Father, who listens, understands and cares about our hurt. In that way we find a release in our own spirits and are free from a man like David Irving.
Best wishes,
Margaret Spill
(82) Anonymous , March 13, 2006
Bs"d
Then I assume the author would agree that if the opportunity arose, Hitler also should not have been imprisoned for expressing his 'freedom of speech' by rallying his countrymen into a frenzy over the 'Jewish vermin'? As Jews we know that words can be more deadly than guns and this argument holds no more water than to allow known violent criminals to own guns to insure that some day guns won't be taken from the police. It is high time that society began distinguishing evil from good instead of muddling around the bogs of moral relativism. Kudos to Austria--for a change.
(81) Jeremy Roberts , March 13, 2006
Ironic... isn't it?
How ironic that neo-Nazis, and those who support Hitler's actions, are those claiming that holocaust denial is not a crime. Surely, as the Nazis 'committed' the holocaust, why do those who support the Nazis 'insult' Hitler, by saying they didn't commit what they set out to do.
Confusing?!