Holocaust Denier Refuses to Fade Away, Offers Offensive ‘Tour’ of Concentration Camps

Convicted Holocaust denier David Irving still at it: “I’m not an anti-Semite, not yet.”

By Yakir Benzion, United With Israel

Some Holocaust deniers are growing old and refusing to fade away, even after losing lawsuits, doing jail time and being banned from countries for spreading their long-debunked anti-Semitic conspiracy theories.

Convicted British Holocaust denier David Irving is a repeat offender who seems to bask in the glory of being proven wrong again and again. Irving has been at it since the 1980s, and his attempts to deny the Nazi slaughter of six million Jews have been repeatedly shot down. Yet he keeps coming back for more punishment.

In 2000 a British court threw out his libel suit against American historian Deborah Lipstadt who called him a Holocaust denier, saying Irving had deliberately misrepresented historical facts to promote Holocaust denial and whitewash the Nazis. The Daily Telegraph went so far as to make sure its reporters referred to Irving as an “author” and not as a “historian.”

Irving spent 13 months in jail in Austria for violating its Holocaust-denial laws. He is banned from several countries, including Austria, Germany, Italy and Canada. In 2017 the The Independent documented Irving speaking at a secret meeting of the neo-Nazi, white supremacist London Forum, where it was claimed that Auschwitz is “like Disneyland” and that the Holocaust was “gossip,” “propaganda” and a “rumor.”

Yet despite courts of law and countries giving him the black and white message that he is wrong, the now-octogenarian is still at it. He was interviewed this week by The Jerusalem Post while leading a nine-day tour of former concentration camps in Latvia and Poland.

Irving said there were 13 people in his group, including a Russian, three Americans, two Britons, a New Zealander, a Canadian, a Frenchman and a Swede who had paid him £2,000 each, adding “some years I break even, some I make a less, some I make a profit.”

The unrepentant Irving implied that whatever happened to the Jews was their own fault.

“The Jews should ask, Why us? It is not for me to ask that question,” Irving told the Post. “Maybe it’s how they have acted over the thousands of years. Maybe it is all our fault. Our Riga tour includes the NKVD headquarters, and the Skirotawa train station, where Jews also played a role,” he said, alleging that Jews collaborated with the Soviet secret police.

Asked if he was an anti-Semite, Irving replied: “No. Despite everything. Not yet.”