'I am no Holocaust denier'
2006-02-20 11:47
Vienna - Vienna - British historian David Irving, facing charges of Holocaust denial in an Austrian court on Monday, told reporters on his way into court he no longer questioned the fact that millions of Jews died in World War Two.
"I'm not a holocaust denier. Obviously, I've changed my views," said the 68-year-old maverick historian, who was arrested when he visited Austria in November to give a speech at a meeting of a right-wing student fraternity.
Holocaust denial is a crime in Austria which carries a prison term of one to 10 years. Austria issued an arrest warrant for Irving after remarks he made on a visit in 1989, but Irving said new documents had made him revise his views since then.
Irving's lawyer Elmar Kresbach told reporters his client would have to plead guilty, but that he would ask the court for leniency because Irving had changed his views and was no threat to Austria's democracy.
'I have learned a lot'
"History is a constantly growing tree - the more you know, the more documents become available, the more you learn, and I have learned a lot since 1989," Irving said.
"Yes, there were gas chambers," said Irving. "Millions of Jews died, there is no question. I don't know the figures. I'm not an expert on the Holocaust."
A British High Court ruling in 2000, rejecting Irving's libel action against an American professor and her publishers, declared Irving "an active Holocaust denier ... anti-Semitic and racist".
He said, however, it was "ridiculous for me to be standing here on trial for something I expressed 17 years ago".
Asked about the Holocaust, he said: "I would call it the Jewish tragedy in World War II."
Irving, 67, risks a 10-year prison sentence under an Austrian law that prosecutes those who "deny the genocide by the National Socialists or other National Socialist crimes against humanity".
Irving was arrested in November after a routine check on a highway in Austria on a 1989 warrant.
The warrant was issued by a Vienna court against Irving for having allegedly denied at meetings in Austria around 1989 that the Nazi regime used gas chambers in concentration camps.
Irving had also said the November 1938 Kristallnacht pogrom against the Jews was not the work of the Nazis but "unknown" people who had dressed up as storm troopers and that Hitler had in fact protected the Jews. - AFP/Reuters