Holocaust denier in town for fundraising talk

The world’s most notorious Holocaust denier kicks off his U.S. tour in the Kansas City area tonight.

On his Web site, British writer David Irving has announced a month-long, 17-city tour of the West and Midwest, during which he will speak on the topic “Hitler, Himmler and Enigma, Rewriting WW2 History using Nazi Messages Decoded by the British Secret Service.”

The first stop is scheduled for 7 p.m. Friday, July 3, at “an (sic) hotel by the airport” in Kansas City, Mo., according to an e-mail from Irving, who promised to inform those who paid the $15 reservation fee the exact location of the meeting shortly before it occurred.

Despite his having authored many books, Irving’s reputation as a historian was shattered when he lost his libel suit against “Denying the Holocaust” author Deborah Lipstadt in 2000. Lipstadt had identified Irving in her 1994 book as a denier, and he objected, hoping to use Britain’s stricter libel laws against the American academic.

But Irving lost, big time. The judge ruled he “has for his own ideological reasons persistently and deliberately misrepresented and manipulated historical evidence; … that he is an active Holocaust denier; that he is anti-Semitic and racist, and that he associates with right-wing extremists who promote neo-Nazism.”

Lipstadt’s book about the case, “History on Trial,” (HarperCollins, 2005) was optioned as a major motion picture by the producers of “The Soloist,” Variety reported April 23.

‘Political Prisoner’

Since 2000, Irving has led a peripatetic existence, including a nearly year-long incarceration in an Austrian jail in 2006 for having violated that country’s law against “trivialising, grossly playing down and denying the Holocaust.” He tempted fate by traveling to Austria, knowing he was wanted on charges first leveled in 1989.

At tonight’s event in KC, Irving will no doubt hawk copies of his latest self-published book, a memoir of the Austrian episode: “Banged Up: Survival as a Political Prisoner in 21st Century Europe.”

It’s not known whether he’ll shill for any of Hitler’s bones, as U.K. press reports had him doing back in March. The London Telegraph quoted Irving as saying his online store is “the only way he can make money after being declared bankrupt in 2002.”

“Items up for sale on the site include Hitler’s walking stick … and a goblet and spoon given as a christening present by Heinrich Himmler to Hermann Goering’s daughter … Irving authenticates the goods, which are offered by other sellers, and takes a 15 per cent commission. The 70-year-old says he is currently trying to confirm the authenticity of bones said to be from Hitler and his girlfriend Eva Braun. Strands of the Fuhrer’s hair are also expected to go on sale …”

First visit to KC

Kenneth S. Stern, the American Jewish Committee’s New York-based expert on extremism and anti-Semitism, said Irving does fund-raising tours of the U.S. from time to time.

“This guy was discredited years ago,” Stern said. “Everybody understands he lies about history to promote Holocaust denial.”

Stern, an attorney, was a key member of Lipstadt’s defense team in the British libel case. Irving figures prominently in the chapter about Holocaust denial in Stern’s most recent book, “Anti-Semitism Today: How It Is Different, How It Is the Same, and How to Fight It” (AJCommittee, 2006).

Kansas Citian Leonard Zeskind, author of the new book “Blood and Politics: The History of the White Nationalist Movement from the Margins to the Mainstream” (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2009), said Irving has never before visited the Kansas City area. He suspects members of the local National Socialist Movement chapter have invited Irving.

“I hear that attendance at some of his events lately has been very small — 20 or 30 people,” Zeskind said. “But he’s the highest-status guy who has come into Kansas City from the white-nationalist, anti-Semitic world in some time — since Bo Gritz came here in the middle of the militia madness.”

In the 1980s, Irving established formal connections with the American fountainhead of Holocaust denial, the Institute for Historical Review — a pseudo-scholarly body based in California. The IHR was controlled by the late Willis Carto, who is a major figure in Zeskind’s book.

Jean Zeldin, executive director of the Midwest Center for Holocaust Education, issued the following written statement:

“David Irving may present himself as a general historian of the WW II era, but courts in the United Kingdom have ruled on this matter and found him to be simply another Holocaust denier. Speaking for the community of Holocaust survivors and MCHE’s educational program, we know that the truth is the truth and cannot be trifled with, no matter what the propagandists have to say.”

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