One for History Society.
If you click here you will get to The Independent’s account of the jailing of Ursula Haverbeck for Holocaust denial. This is a criminal offence in Germany, carrying a sentence of up to five years in jail.
“Ursula Haverbeck, who has been branded the “Nazi grandma” by German press, was sentenced by a Berlin court on Monday for denying the holocast at an event in Berlin back in January 2016.
She claimed the Holocaust did not take place and there were no gas chambers at the Auschwitz Nazi death camp. Auschwitz is the largest mass murder site in human history and an estimated 1.1 million people died there.
Ms Haverbeck, who once declared the Holocaust was “the biggest and most sustainable lie in history” in a TV interview, has never spent time in prison before despite having several previous convictions for holocaust denial.”
It does of course raise the classic debating question of free speech Vs the well being of the state. Whilst we historians think of this in terms of the collapse of Weimar Germany, the rise of the far right AfD in Germany’s recent elections perhaps make this a more modern political issue.
Have a read and see what you think.
Mr Kydd.
