The Theater of Lies - the John Demjanjuk Case

The following is an older post wich talks about his first trial and not the new one going on in Germany today.


The Theater of Lies - the John Demjanjuk Case

As the physical evidence for mass exterminations at Nazi camps is missing (see a review of Auschwitz and Treblinka), much credence is placed on "holocaust survivors" eyewitness accounts. This is a mistaken trust: One of the best examples ever of how "holocaust survivors" have manufactured and lied in creating “memoirs” is the John Demjanjuk case. In this example the blatant fabrications and falsified claims were even too much for the Israeli Supreme Court, who threw them out.

The John Demjanjuk story begins in October 1975, when a list of names of alleged Nazi war criminals was circulated amongst members of the US senate. The list originated with the Soviet Union’s KGB, allegedly out of material captured by the Soviet Army at the end of World War II.

One of the names appearing on the list was that of John Ivan Demjanjuk – an Ukrainian who had immigrated to the USA in 1951 and who had been living in Cleveland, Ohio, since 1958.

The KGB document alleged that Demjanjuk had been a soldier in the Red Army who, after falling into German captivity, had volunteered for service in the S.S.

Demjanjuk, had, said the Soviet document, undergone training at the SS camp in the town of Trawniki, Poland. He had, continued the document, served from March 1943 as an SS guard at the Sobibor camp, and later at the Floenbuerg concentration camp.

US GOVERNMENT STARTS DENATURALIZATION AND CRIMINAL INVESTIGATION PROCEEDINGS

Acting on this information, the US government started proceedings to strip Demjanjuk of his citizenship, based on his alleged concealment of his Nazi past from the Immigration and Naturalization Service.

In addition, the US Government instructed its Department of Justice to start a full investigation into the allegations contained in the Soviet document, in preparation for a deportation hearing to send Demjanjuk to Israel for trial.

ISRAELIS FIND “EYEWITNESSES” WHO PLACE DEMJANJUK AT TREBLINKA

In February 1976, the American government requested the Israeli government’s co-operation in finding Israeli citizens who were survivors from the Sobibor camp who might be able to identify Demjanjuk. The source of identification was passport photographs submitted by Demjanjuk to the INS during his application for citizenship in 1950 – the logic being that Demjanjuk would still appear relatively similar to how he had looked in 1943.

During 1976, the Israeli police identified a number of Jews who were on record as having been rescued or escaped from the Treblinka or Sobibor camps.

These “survivors”, when shown the photographs of Demjanjuk, identified him as a guard called “Ivan the Terrible” who had allegedly operated the gas chamber at Treblinka.

Despite the American government actually having identified Demjanjuk as having been a guard at the geographically separate Sobibor camp, the “eyewitness survivors” placed Demjanjuk at the Treblinka camp, and of being the gas chamber operator there.

DEMJANJUK STRIPPED OF US CITIZENSHIP, DEPORTED TO ISRAEL

The next year, 1977, the INS instituted denaturalization proceedings against Demjanjuk. While these proceedings were underway, the US Department of Justice then created an Office of Special Investigations (OSI) who sole job it was to track down alleged Nazi war criminals in the USA.

Partly as a result of the delay caused by the creation of the OSS, Demjanjuk’s denaturalization hearing only began in February 1981. In June 1985, he was finally stripped of his US citizenship, and became the subject of a deportation hearing served by the state of Israel.

It took another five years of legal wrangling before Demjanjuk was finally deported to Israel in 1986 to stand trial

ISRAELI CASE BASED ON EYEWITNESSES AND SS ID CARD

The State of Israel's application for extradition was based on the testimony of “eyewitnesses” and a SS identification card, allegedly issued to Demjanjuk upon completion of his training at the Trawniki SS camp.

Above: The "Trawniki Certificate" - a SS identification card bearing Demjanjuk's name and photograph. Supplied by the KGB, it was a critical piece of evidence - until the collapse of the Soviet Union allowed it to be revealed as a KGB forgery.

This card, which became know as the ‘Trawniki certificate” was a pivotal piece of evidence, as it contained Demjanjuk’s photograph. The card itself had been provided to the prosecution directly out of Soviet records. Along with the identification card, the prosecution produced five “eyewitnesses” who all testified that Demjanjuk was “Ivan the Terrible” who operated gas chambers in Treblinka.

DEMJANJUK DENIES ALL CHARGES

Demjanjuk’s defense was that he had been captured by the Germans and had remained in their captivity throughout the war, never serving with the SS. The prosecution dismissed his defense, producing eye witness identifying him personally, and an SS-identification card with his photograph – the case against Demjanjuk seemed overwhelming, and unsurprisingly, no-one believed him.

EYEWITNESS ACCOUNTS FINGER DEMJANJUK

The first ‘survivor’ to testify, Pinhas Epstein, took the stand on 23 February 1987, and told the court that “I am convinced that opposite me sits Ivan the Terrible of Treblinka” (Reuters, 23 February 1987).

Epstein said he saw a photograph of Demjanjuk in an album shown to him in 1978 by Israeli investigators. "I was shown an album and my attention was drawn to one picture, and I identified it as that of Ivan.” (Reuters, 23 February 1987).

“I said the photo was not particularly sharp. It was older than the Ivan I knew, but it was still him. The frame, the round face, the short neck, the wide shoulders and the protruding ears. I told them this is the Ivan I remember,” Epstein said. (Reuters, 23 February 1987.)

“I would go to the gas chambers to take out the corpses . . . he would stand and look at the result of his handiwork – the stabbing of girls, the gouging of eyes, the pieces of the girls' breasts . . . this would occur meters from me,” Epstein continued in his evidence (Reuters, 23 February 1987).

The next ‘survivor eyewitness’, Eliyhau Rosenberg, then told the court on 25 February 1987: “This man is Ivan, without a shadow of a doubt – Ivan from Treblinka, from the gas chambers, - the man I am looking at now,” (Reuters, 25 February 1987).

Rosenberg testified that he got to know Demjanjuk really well, and that once Demjanjuk had given him 30 lashes for stealing bread, and had then forced him to say “thank you.” (Reuters, 25 February 1987).

Rosenberg went to tell the court that at the age of 12, he was forced to remove bodies from the gas chambers and bury or burn them. “We soon discovered that women and children burned quicker than men. The Germans would tell us: ‘Throw the children first because they burn faster,’ ” Rosenberg said. (Reuters, 25 February 1987).

DEMJANJUK CONVICTED, SENTENCED TO DEATH

To no-one’s surprise, the Israeli Court found Demjanjuk guilty on 18 April 18, 1988, and a week later, sentenced him to death for the only crime in Israel which carries the death penalty – being a Nazi. The conviction had been obtained based primarily on the SS identification card and the eyewitness accounts which identified Demjanjuk as the gas chamber operator at Treblinka.

The defense immediately appealed, citing numerous irregularities in court procedure, rules of evidence and other issues.

SOVIET UNION’S COLLAPSE REVEALS TRAWNIKI FORGERY

At a critical juncture in the appeal process – when Demjanjuk’s life hung in the balance- fate intervened. One of the appeal judges had a heart attack, and the case was postponed.

During the postponement, in 1990, the Soviet Union suddenly collapsed. As a result, the KGB archives on the case were opened (the reader will recall that the original list and Trawniki certificate had originated with the KGB).

Above: Holocaust "survivor" and eyewitness: Eliyhau Rosenberg breaks down in the Israeli courtroom after identifying John Demjanjuk as 'Ivan the Terrible'. Rosenberg's testimony, like ALL the "survivors" who testified against Demjanjuk, was shown to be false.

In the KGB file dealing with Demjanjuk, the shocking truth was revealed - the Trawniki certificate had been forged to frame the Ukrainian as part of a campaign against Ukrainian nationalists.

CASE COLLAPSES - DEMJANJUK ACQUITTED ON APPEAL

Faced with the exposure of the Trawniki certificate as an outrageous forgery, the Israeli Supreme Court, to its credit, acknowledged that the entire case against Demjanjuk had been fabricated from start to finish, and acquitted him in July 1993, stating that there was no evidence to show that Demjanjuk was indeed ‘Ivan the Terrible.’

Above: John Demjanjuk, still in his Israeli prison clothes, laughs with delight after his acquittal - and the Israeli Supreme Court's dismissal of the "eyewitness" accounts which claimed to have seen him operating a gas chamber at Treblinka camp.

On 22 September 1993, John Demjanjuk was finally released and allowed to return home to Cleveland, Ohio – an innocent man who spent seven years in an Israeli jail, because of a KGB forgery and a pack of fabricated evidence from “holocaust survivors.”

ISRAELI SUPREME COURT DISMISSES “EYEWITNESS” EVIDENCE

Implicit in its dismal of the case against Demjanjuk, the Israeli Supreme Court tacitly acknowledged that ALL of the eye witness accounts which placed Demjanjuk at Treblinka, were false.

For this reason, the John Demjanjuk case serves as an outstanding example of just how unreliable "holocaust survivor eyewitnesses” are. For if the Israeli Supreme Court could not bring itself to believe them – and that institution, of all, would be the most likely to take their word – then this serves as an indication of just how false these accounts are.

If the ‘survivors’ could lie so blatantly in identifying Demjanjuk, then it is fair to ask what else in their testimony was fabricated?

While it is difficult to establish whether these “holocaust eyewitnesses” lie consciously or unconsciously, the end result is the same – namely that the most outrageous and extreme lies are being told and, more often than not, accepted as historical fact.

David Irving, the Thought Criminal

How is it possible, in these United States, that a group of people, who wish to get together to discuss a historical topic, must relentlessly hide their intention, obfuscate their meeting place, and keep their identities secret, if they don't wish to be hounded like wanted criminals? How is it that citizens who wish to meet peacefully do not have the protection of the law, in order to practice what the law supposedly guarantees, that is, freedom of speech and freedom of assembly?

It's not unusual for one party of citizens to be roused to anger by the beliefs and practices of others. This is to be expected. But in this supposed land of the free, we do not expect that opponents of particular views will be allowed license to destroy websites, steal email information, and confiscate personal correspondence, while threatening hotel managers with violence, if they rent space to certain groups or events. It is not anyone's responsibility to provide a platform for the public expression of opinions, but it is the responsibility of the government to protect citizens from those who would prevent such expression.

Whatever became of that bold white American man, descendant of the Founders, who proudly declared, "I may not agree with what you say, but I'll defend with my life your right to say it?" Is he too busy these days playing with his ever-increasing array of techie toys, gadgets and gizmos, to give a damn about the ongoing loss of one freedom after another, freedoms originally conceived by those 18th century men, who foolishly believed that their singular creation could be entrusted to these very descendants?

These are rhetorical questions to which I expect no answers. I've also ceased expecting indignation from that once watchful and attentive white American man, as he passively accepts the ongoing demise of constitutional principles meant to enforce laws to be obeyed by the high and the lowly.

On November 13, 2009, Professor David Irving was scheduled to give a talk on World War II history, this one to focus on Hitler, Himmler and codebreaking. Irving is a meticulous historian and the author of several acclaimed and respected works of history, including Nuremberg and Churchill's War.

He is despised by a coterie of adversaries for his dissenting views on aspects of World War II's Holocaust, a subject he does not lecture on, but for which he was sentenced in Austria to three years in prison. That is, a historian was imprisoned for expressing opinions that conflict with a standardized version of events that took place during the middle of the 20th century.

Throughout Europe, powerful interest groups have managed to get laws enacted that forbid historians from engaging in further research or exploration of the forbidden Holocaust topic, for which there is now an established "official" text. You see, Europe is full of the types of countries whose oppressive traditions the Founders of this nation strove to avoid. In their time, it was Kings who could throw you into prison for refusing to conform to the Royal Imperatives.

On November 13, the date of Irving's first intended lecture in New York, hackers broke into his website and AOL email account, confiscating lists of the names of those scheduled to attend his forthcoming lectures. The miscreants then published his email correspondence, along with the user name and password for his website and AOL accounts, and the names and email addresses (in some cases, street addresses) of donors and purchasers of Irving's books. His books, by the way, are not furtively published samizdat, and can be bought in most bookstores, as well as from Amazon.

Well aware of the danger he and his lecture participants are in whenever he speaks, Irving has been forced to establish an elaborate system of subterfuge where he keeps the meeting place secret until almost the last minute, and then emails the location to the interested parties. Due to the damage done to the website, this first meeting was necessarily curtailed.

On November 14, Irving's second scheduled lecture, at the Double Tree Hotel in New York, was invaded and disrupted by a band of self-appointed "anti-fascists," who maced one of the attendants. The offending thugs very proudly published an account of their exploits on websites, bragging about how Irving "just got his ass handed to him."

What we have here are self-elected Enforcers, who have usurped powers never granted to one citizen over another, yet who go unchallenged by any legal authority. These are Enforcers who claim the right to judge which points of view should be permitted to prevail, and which ones shall be banned from the public square.

In their attempts to be credible, Enforcers purposely, with malice aforethought, mischaracterize their perceived enemies in the most extreme fashion, and venomously misinterpret their theses or positions. The dissenting sinner must not be allowed to bring his views directly to the public, or be given the opportunity to offer any type of clarification.

Knowing that volatile terminology is bound to rouse the hackles of average people, most of whom are not paying attention anyway, the Enforcers load their charges against their opponents with such extreme epithets as "Nazi," "racist," "white supremacist." Once so labeled, the targeted subject matter, or group, or individual, is supposed to be doomed.

For example, in the case of the labeling of "Holocaust deniers," this is a lie in itself, since none of these researchers deny that a movement against Jews took place during World War II. However, in our country, a nation ruled by the Constitution, the truth or invalidity of a researcher's position on some historical subject is of no consequence. In the land of Jefferson, Madison and Jay, we have the right to be misguided or simply wrong.

If some intrepid soul wishes to give lectures on how Africans enjoyed being slaves and that enslavement was a great favor done for them, his right to lecture is not dependent on whether or not his thesis is correct. That part of it is not the government's business. Its only business is to see to it that this individual, no matter how benighted he might be deemed by foes of his viewpoint, is protected from those who would do him harm, by stealing his property or endangering his person. We do not search for ways to eradicate his freedoms, nor should we set up phony legal mechanisms to imprison him.

In his own version of that aforementioned declaration, i.e., to defend another's right to speak, even when in disagreement, Thomas Paine wrote, "He that would make his own liberty secure must guard even his enemy from oppression." Today, these 18th century warnings are nothing but corny words, not to be taken seriously by a people who would disgrace themselves by permitting the passage of unconstitutional "hate crime" laws. When a people indicate that they're ready to punish citizens as "Thought Criminals," then nothing that follows can be surprising.

Although I have never attended an Irving lecture, I have read one of his impressive books, and I am on his mailing list. Over the years, I have written on the topic of European repression of scholars, academics and researchers for the Issues & Views website. I list links to some of these articles below:

Free speech still struggles to survive, in Europe and in the USA

Europe's Hypocrites and Liars - Part I

Europe's Hypocrites and Liars - Part II

When Truth Is No Defense

Related:

David Irving - Biography

Irving Describes His Austria Arrest and Imprisonment

Who Is Ernst Zundel, And Why Is He In Jail?

Source: Issues and Views

Why would any writer make up stories about the Holocaust?

Why would any writer make up stories about the Holocaust? Melissa Katsoulis explores the strangest corner in the bizarre world of the literary hoax

Researching a book about literary hoaxes led me to investigate a sub-section of the misery-memoir genre which often left me reeling in amazement: the Holocaust hoaxers. Special privilege must be given to those increasingly few witness-writers who survived the Second World War in Europe, but they have certain duties too.

It is their right to write how and when they want (perhaps many decades later, if they are ready) and, as with Elie Wiesel, with their own definitions of truth and fiction. It was he who said that "Some stories are true that never happened."

However, those memoirists who think that they can pretend they were there when they weren't ought to remember that hijacking the experiences of others for selfish ends will only end in ignominy. Their motivations were, as so often in life and letters, a combination of pain, hope and greed, and they were emboldened by a marketplace in thrall to the misery memoir.

Why the huge demand for such books? Perhaps what readers seek in trauma stories is akin to what people look for in pornography: something edgy they have never seen before, followed by a spectacular resolution. And they want to identify (safely) with what they are reading; to try on someone else's crisis for a while and see how it compares to their own. All these hoaxers had difficult childhoods but, feeling that their truth was shamefully small, they sought the grand signifier of the Holocaust to attract the compassion that they desired.

Misha Defonseca's story began to emerge from her adopted Massachusetts in the mid-1990s and was, like many a hoaxer's tale, one which in retrospect seems ridiculously far-fetched. It also had that great asset of the schmaltzy life-story: the love of a four-legged friend.

She told of crossing the wastes of war-torn Europe as a lonely child and not only being adopted by a pack of friendly wolves, but single-handedly murdering a burly German soldier. She gave inspirational talks about her epic journey, smiled sweetly for the camera at a local wolf sanctuary and eventually published her story in 1997.

Misha: A Memoir of the Holocaust Years was an instant success, embodying the vain hope that belief, endurance (and fluffy animals) could mean something even in the face of Hitler's machine. It was money that brought her down. A falling-out about royalties led her publisher to enlist the help of historians to look into what was beginning to seem like a fishy back-story. When zoologists confirmed that no such wolf-woman love could have existed, and photos appeared of her war-time childhood (smiling, well-fed and out shopping with her grandmother), "Misha" knew the game was up.

Last year she finally confessed, admitting that she was in fact a Belgian Christian whose father's work for the Gestapo left her traumatised by the stigma of being a "traitor's child". She said: "It is not the actual reality – it was my reality, my way of surviving".

Binjamin Wilkomirski, who turned out not to be a Latvian-Jewish orphan but a rather comfortably-off Swiss clarinettist, is the most famous example. His spectacular lies were similarly accounted for by the repentant author. He initially claimed he had escaped to Switzerland after nearly dying in the camps, and in Fragments detailed rats feasting on corpses and Nazis crushing men to death. The book won him a host of literray prizes, but survivors noticed that his descriptions of camp life were unconvincing.

Research revealed him to be a local lad, Bruno Grosjean, fostered during the war after his mother gave him up. In her meticulous exposé in Granta, Elena Lappin concluded that as a child Bruno and his mother might have been indentured labourers, but that he had been conflating this with an imagined ghetto past for so long that he had become a "Man with Two Heads".

His humiliation was complete when it was revealed that one of the girls he claimed to have befriended in the camps, Laura Grabowsky, was a fraud herself – an unhinged American serial-hoaxer who had written not only a fake Holocaust memoir but a phoney one about satanic ritual abuse to boot.

The most recent case is Herman Rosenblat, the twinkly-eyed American pensioner who came forward with a story so magical that it lifted the heart of every cynic in New York. As a young boy in Buchenwald, he said, he strolled daily along the perimeter fence to meet a little girl on the outside. She would toss him a shiny apple and in so doing gave him the hope - and the vitamins - to carry on.

Decades later, as he wrote in Angel at the Fence, which very nearly got published earlier this year, he randomly met a woman in New York who had also fled post-war Europe. As they talked, Herman decided that she must be the apple girl. They went on to fall in love and marry.

When his story came out, via appearances on Oprah, it was easy to debunk: anyone approaching the perimeter fence would immediately have been shot. Rosenblat had been promised a comfortable retirement on the proceeds of his late-flowering career as a memoirist, and his claim that he was only trying to spread a little hope with his story fell on deaf ears.

In fact, he really had been in a sub-camp of Buchenwald and the true story of his and his devoted brothers' survival is far more moving than the one he made up. Only nobody wants to listen to that now.

These three had at least been born in or near the theatre of war. But what would make an Australian born in 1972 fabricate a Holocaust story? The case of Helen Demidenko is the most peculiar of them all. Demidenko - real name Darville - was a right-wing student in Brisbane who in 1993 published The Hand That Signed the Paper, about the wartime experiences of the narrator's Ukrainian father and uncle. However, they were not victims of Nazi violence but the perpetrators, having joined the Einsatzgruppen after being terrorised by Russian-Jewish "commissars".

Florid accounts of their life as merry Jew-hating death squad members flowed enthusiastically from her pen, and when she won the Australian/ Vogel Literary Award she began appearing in Ukrainian national dress and speaking in a funny accent. Her unmasking was aided by the ire of the international Jewish community at her sideline as an anti-Israeli journalist. Interviewing David Irving was not her finest hour.

But unlike the other hoaxers, she remained unrepentant, blithely speaking of the "wog accent" she put on and her annoyance at a politically-correct culture whose prejudices she despised.

Darville's case may not be typical of Holocaust hoaxers, but it fits exactly into the mould of the Australian literary hoax. All of them, even the harmless-sounding Ern Malley poetry hoax, whose victim was a radical Jewish poetry editor despised by the young fogies who made up Ern's oeuvre, are characterised by a combination of racial anxiety and anti-intellectualism.

Darville is more than just a juvenile postscript to the strange canon of the Shoah-fantasists. She would never have committed her distasteful hoax had she not picked up on and wanted to subvert that dangerous concept of the "Holocaust bore".

That idea is perpetuated by people – like Defonseca, Wilkomirski and Rosenblat – whose output contributes to the notion of an unregulated Holocaust "industry", where victimhood is rewarded by money and fame.

Yes, the notion of absolute truth in life-writing is notoriously fraught. But when a writer stands before other survivors and gives as scripture what is stolen from the memories of real witnesses, they can expect little sympathy.

Source: The Independent

French fine comedian $30,000 for hosting Auschwitz revisionist

Black comedian fined for naughty satire

Yesterday we reported that a German court fined Catholic Bishop Richard Williamson more than $16,000 for making naughty statements about Auschwitz. Today comes news that a black comedian, Dieudonne M'bala M'bala, has been fined $30,000 by a French court for inviting Auschwitz revisionist Dr. Robert Faurisson on stage during a satirical skit, to massive applause from the Paris audience. Douglas Reed titled one of his books Insanity Fair. We appear to be inhabiting a sequel which begs the question, who is the comedian, Mr. M'bala M'bala, or the French judiciary?

Comedian Dieudonne M'bala M'bala

France fines black comic for anti-Semitism

(AFP) Oct. 27, 2009

PARIS — French judges ordered a far-right black comedian to pay 20,000 euros (30,000 dollars) Tuesday over an anti-Semitic stunt during a stage show in which he invited a notorious Holocaust denier onto stage.

The Paris court fined Dieudonne M'bala M'bala, a 43-year-old French stand up, 10,000 euros for his "public anti-Semitic insults" and told him to pay a further 10,000 in damages and legal fees to organisations that sued him.

He was prosecuted after he invited Robert Faurisson, an academic who has been convicted of Holocaust denial, onto stage during a Paris comedy show to receive a satirical award from an actor dressed as a Jewish deportee.

The comic admitted at the hearing that the show had been a "comedy bomb attack" but defended his right to free expression. Anti-racism and Jewish defence organisations welcomed the verdict.
Dieudonne, a former anti-racism campaigner whose father was Cameroonian, often courts controversy and this year tried to enter politics by standing for the European parliament as head of an "anti-Zionist" party.

In September 2007, Dieudonne was fined after he accused Jews of exploiting "memorial pornography" and attacked a "Zionist lobby which cultivates the idea of their unique suffering ... and has declared war on the black world."

Two months later he was back in court and was fined 5,000 euros for having compared Jews to "slave-traders". He remains under investigation over a video circulating on the Internet in which he appears to attack a "yid Zionist lobby" led by "racist liars".


Dieudonne M'bala M'bala introducing Prof. Robert Faurisson on stage in a Paris theatre, a "crime" for which he has been fined $30,000.


Source: On the Contrary

Italian Professor who doubts Auschwitz gassings faces legal action

Rome, 23 October 2009 (AKI) - The Holocaust-denying views of an Italian academic at the University of Rome 'La Sapienza,' Antonio Caracciolo, has sparked calls for him to resign. The 59-year-old philosophy of law researcher's blogs have described the World War II Nazi Holocaust - or extermination of six million Jews - as "a legend" and claim the gas chambers "are one of many 'truths' which need to be verified."

The head of Rome's Jewish community, Riccardo Pacifici, said it will take legal action against the academic. "We are waiting for the university to take measures to protect students and will certainly be taking action against Caracciolo," Pacifici said. "We are confident the university won't be the only institution to act and that the whole of civil society will react."

In 2007, Italy's previous centre-left government, headed by Romano Prodi, passed a law making Holocaust-denial a crime.

The rector of 'La Sapienza', Luigi Frati has announced the university "will consider taking disciplinary action" against Caracciolo, without giving any further details. "He would do well to visit Dachau, which I visited when I was 16, or if he can't manage that, the Ardeatine Caves," said Frati. He was referring to the former Nazi concentration camp in southern Germany and to the notorious World War II massacre of 333 Italian civilians in Rome by Nazi troops.

Rome's mayor Gianni Alemanno has stated his opposition to university lecturers with such views. "I don't think a professor who holds Holocaust-denying views can teach at 'La Sapienza," he stated.

The president of the Lazio region surrounding Rome, Piero Marazzo, and of the Province of Rome, Nicola Zingaretti condemned Caracciolo's views.

'La Sapienza' professors and students also expressed shock and dismay at the content of Caracciolo's blogs. The head of the Political Science Faculty, where Caracciolo teaches, Gianluigi Rossi, said it was "a very bad day." Social sciences undergraduate Massimo, from Florence, described Caracciolo's Holocaust-denying views as "extremely serious."

Caracciolo has denied he is a "historical revisionist" and says he believes in freedom of thought and expression which are guaranteed under the Italian constitution.

It is not the first time that an Italian academic has expressed such views. In November last year, Roberto Valvo, a high-school history teacher was suspended after he claimed there was "no proof" of the Holocaust.

In May 2007, authorities barred a visit to Italy by the French Holocaust-denying historian Robert Faurisson, on the invitation of Claudio Moffa, a lecturer at the Univerity of Teramo in Italy's central Abruzzo region.

The move came after heated protests from Italy's Jewish community. Caracciolo had defended the planned debate.

Source: On the Contrary

Sweden refuses assistance in priest's Holocaust denial inquiry

Regensburg,Germany - Sweden has refused to summon a journalist for questioning in a possible German prosecution of Richard Williamson, the fundamentalist Catholic clergyman who caused a furor by questioning the scale of the Holocaust. Prosecutors in the German city of Regensburg admitted Thursday the inquiry was effectively stalled. Williamson, a British leader of the Society of St Pius X (SSPX), gave an interview last year to a Swedish TV journalist near the German city, where the SSPX, an advocate of old-style Catholicism, has a seminary. A re-broadcast of the interview this year, just after Pope Benedict XVI ended the excommunication of Williamson and three other SSPX leaders, triggered a storm worldwide. Regensburg prosecutors opened an inquiry to see if he could be charged with Holocaust denial, which is a crime under German law. They asked their Swedish counterparts to summon the journalist for questioning. But Sweden replied there was no legal basis to interrogate the journalist as requested. Prosecutor Guenther Ruckdaeschel said this was apparently because of journalistic privilege in Sweden, although he said, from a German point of view, the argument made no sense. "Legally, we can't see why. It wouldn't be any problem here to question a journalist," he said. "If we don't get anything from Sweden, we'll just have to see how we can get on without this testimony."Population studies show that 5 million to 6 million European Jews were killed by all causes,including death camps, starvation, disease and battle, during the Nazi period. In the interview, Williamson, 69, appeared to question that, contending there was no historical evidence of Nazi gas chambers and claiming "only 200,000 to 300,000 Jews" had been killed in concentration camps. Through his lawyer, he has told the German prosecutors he was assured his remarks were for broadcast in Sweden only, where there is no law against doubting the Holocaust.

Source: Earth Times