Jewish leaders urge Pope not to rehabilitate Holocaust-denying bishop

Jewish leaders on Friday urged Pope Benedict not to rehabilitate a traditionalist bishop who denies the Holocaust, saying it would foment anti-Semitism and open a deep wound in Christian-Jewish relations.

Italian media have said the pope could this weekend revoke the excommunications of four traditionalist bishops from the Society of Saint Pius X (SSPX) in his latest attempt to heal a 20-year-old schism in the Roman Catholic Church. The rift became a crisis in 1998, when the late French archbishop Marcel Lefebvre illegally consecrated four bishops in defiance of the late Pope John Paul. One of the four bishops, the British-born Bishop Richard Williamson, has made a number of statements denying the full extent of the Nazi Holocaust of European Jews, as accepted by most mainstream historians.

In comments to Swedish television broadcast on Wednesday, he said: "I believe that the historical evidence is hugely against 6 million having been deliberately gassed in gas chambers as a deliberate policy of Adolf Hitler...I believe there were no gas chambers".

Williamson said he agreed with "revisionists" who say that "between 200,000 and 300,000 Jews perished in Nazi concentration camps, but not one of them by gassing in a gas chamber".

Elan Steinberg, vice president of the American Gathering of Holocaust Survivors and their Descendants, said the possibility that the pope would accept Williamson back into the mainstream church "has been received with shock and consternation".

"For the Jewish people and all persons who feel the pain of the terrible years of the Shoah, this development marks a dangerous blow to interfaith dialogue and encourages hate-mongers everywhere," he said.

Rome's chief rabbi, Riccardo Di Segni, said he was "shocked by such a horror of denial, which is even more grave since it comes from a bishop".

Di Segni told the newspaper La Stampa that Williamson's re-admission into the Church would open "a deep wound in dialogue with Judaism".

The traditionalists bishops reject many reforms of the 1962-1965 Second Vatican Council, notably its decision that Mass should be said in local languages rather than Latin, and its advocacy of dialogue with other religions.

A statement from the traditionalists said the implication they are racist was "entirely false and unjust". But it said the group had the right to "pray for conversion (of Jews) to the true faith, to study their recent and tragic history, or to question some of their political objectives".

At the end of the Swedish interview, William says he realizes he could go to jail for Holocaust denial in Germany.

Pope Benedict has already made several gestures of reconciliation to the schismatic group, including allowing the unconditional return of the old-style Latin Mass. That move angered Jews because the ceremony includes a Good Friday prayer for their conversion.

Ha'aretz

Holocaust revisionist held at Heathrow

Hutton Gibson (father of actor Mel Gibson) with Fredrick Töben (right)

Australian wanted in Germany for website that disputes historical facts

A holocaust revisionist will appear before a British court on Friday after being arrested at the request of the German authorities.

Gerald Fredrick Töben was detained at Heathrow yesterday by officers from Scotland Yard's extradition unit as he stepped off a plane from America. Last night, he was remanded in custody at City of Westminster Magistrates' Court to reappear on Friday.

The 64-year-old Australian is wanted in Germany, accused of publishing material on the internet "of an anti-Semitic and/or revisionist nature deliberately contrary to historical truth", that denies, approves of or plays down the "mass murder of Jews planned and implemented by the Nationalist Socialist party". He was detained yesterday under an EU arrest warrant issued by the German authorities, which accuses him of committing the offence in their country, his native land and others.

The former teacher, who was born in northern Germany in 1944 but emigrated to Australia as a 10-year-old, set up the Adelaide Institute in 1994, an internet site that questions the "story, legend, myth" behind the Holocaust. It also doubts whether HIV causes Aids.

While he denies being anti-Semitic or calling the Holocaust a lie, Dr Töben, a doctor of philosophy, has previously insisted killings took place on a much smaller scale. In 2006, he met Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and dismissed as "mere puffery" evidence of the Nazis' mass killings of Jews.

In 1999, his fellow revisionists declared him a "martyr" after he was sentenced to 10 months in prison for breaching Germany's holocaust law. The Mannheim court cleared him of the more serious charge of incitement to racial hatred because the material was written outside Germany. In 2000, Germany's Supreme Court made foreigners liable for internet crimes.

In 2002, a judge in the Federal Court of Australia found that his website "vilified Jewish people" and ordered him to remove offensive material from it. However, it did not enforce an earlier order made by the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission that the site be closed down and that he issue a written apology to the Executive Council of the Australian Jewry.

On the website, Dr Töben lists the "victims imprisoned for refusing to believe in the Holocaust". He adds: "If you wish to doubt the Holocaust-Shoah narrative, be prepared for sacrifice, marriage and family break-up, loss of career, and to go to prison. This is because Revisionists are... dismantling a massive multibillion dollar industry that the Holocaust-Shoah enforcers are defending, as well as the survival of Zionist-racist Israel.

Independent

Holocaust revisionist to face trial

French revisionist historian Robert Faurisson is to face trial on charges of attending an anti-Holocaust conference in Iran.

Faurisson said he received a letter from the French judicial police (DCPJ), demanding he should present himself before the court on January 24, IRNA reported.

On December 11, 2006, Iran hosted a two-day conference entitled 'Review of the Holocaust: Global vision' aimed at probing the West's allegations, claiming that over six million European Jews were killed by Germany during World War II. Faurisson in Tehran repeated his theories about gas chambers and said that in the past 32 years, he had been waiting for someone to show him one of those chambers.

The French Holocaust revisionist was convicted of 'Holocaust denial' by a Paris court in July 2006 over remarks he made on Iranian television. Faurisson, then 77, was given a three-month suspended prison term and was also fined 7,500 euros.

Speaking on the Sahar 1 Iranian satellite channel in February 2005, Faurisson said there was never a single execution gas chamber under the Germans. "So all those millions of tourists who visit Auschwitz are seeing a lie, a falsification,” he said.

In 1989, Faurisson was hospitalized after he was attacked by French Jews. He suffered a broken jaw and ribs and severe head injuries in a savage attack by a number of radical Jews while he was walking his dog in the town of Vichy. In 1991, he was removed from his university chair under the Gayssot Act, a French statute passed in 1990 that prohibited any doubts over the Holocaust.

PressTV