Archive/File: fascism/germany reuters.031694 Last-Modified: 1994/06/22 Newsgroups: alt.revisionism From: golux@world.std.com (and not a mere Device) Subject: German Appeals Court Ruling Message-ID:Date: Wed, 16 Mar 1994 14:50:22 GMT Reuters report in today's Boston Globe (03/16/94): **************************************************************************** KARLSRUHE, Germany -- Germany's highest appeals court broke with tradition yesterday and ruled that claiming the Holocaust never occurred did not in itself constitute incitement to racial hatred. The Federal Court of Justice ordered the retrial of a far- right leader who had been convicted of denigrating Holocaust victims and inciting racial hatred by propagating the so-called "Auschwitz lie" - the claim that war crimes never occurred in Nazi death camps. The court said it was "too much of a generalization" to assume that this in itself constituted incitement to racial hatred, an apparently new interpretation of the law. It revoked a one-year suspended sentence and $6,000 fine imposed in November 1991 on Guenter Deckert, head of the National Democratic Party. Sources in the Jewish community objected, and a German television commentator described it as a dangerous move that would give Nazi apologists credibility. The Berlin-based Die Welt newspaper said today that the court's decision was astonishing. "One wipes one's eyes in amazement," it said. "Up till now, it has been regarded as common sense in this republic that injustice is condemned as injustice and that Nazi apologists should not be indulged." Deckert had been convicted after organizing a lecture by the US neo-Nazi Fred Leuchter of Malden, Mass., who said Nazi war crimes had never occurred and that the Auschwitz camp had no gas chambers. The Karlsruhe-based court said in its ruling the Mannheim district court that sentenced Deckert had not sufficiently backed up the charge of inciting racial hatred. It said that claiming Auschwitz had never occurred did not, in itself, justify the charge and that the court should have determined whether Deckert subscribed to Nazi ideology. The appeals court ordered Mannheim justices to test whether Deckert had "attacked the dignity of the Jewish community in Germany" by claiming that the Holocaust had not occurred. Leuchter, a Nazi apologist who designs execution chambers for US prisons and who is due to stand trial in Germany for inciting racial hatred, told Deckert's party at the 1991 lecture that he had visited Auschwitz and established that it had no gas chambers and that war crimes had not taken place there. Deckert translated the Leuchter lecture into German and later marketed video tapes of the speech. ***************************************************************************** As you can see, Reuters still hasn't quite got it right about Leuchter. (Although, I suppose that he might "design[] execution chambers for US prisons" on cocktail napkins or in his head.... Reuters didn't say the US prisons actually use his designs.) At least they didn't say he is an engineer. Anyway, this report is presented in full so people can see what's what before the Deniers and other Nazi apologists spin it into a crushing victory. D.J.Schaeffer | The Todal looks like a blob of glup. It makes golux@world.std.com | a sound like rabbits screaming and smells ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ of old, unopened rooms. James Thurber, _The 13 Clocks_
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