Mannheim Prosecutor Hans-Heiko Klein
ON SEPTEMBER 2, 1990, David Irving delivered a lecture on war history to a large middle-class German audience in Weinheim, south-western Germany. The meeting was chaired by schoolteacher and politician Günter Deckert, a local councillor and national chief of the (legal) German NPD party. Police officials were, as has become customary in modern democratic Germany, present throughout and took notes. Deckert marketed a video/audio recording of the speech.
For six years, that was that. When
the persecution of Messrs. Irving and Deckert began, these
ancient lectures were exhumed from the police archives, and
prosecutions were initiated. Deckert, by then already
serving a two-year jail sentence for acting as interpreter
and translator (yes, for just that) during a Mannheim
lecture by US execution-technology expert Fred Leuchter, had
two more years in jail added for acting as chairman at Mr
Irving's lecture.
The Mannheim public prosecutor, the notorious Hans-Heiko
Klein, also tried to grasp the British historian,
mailing an indictment to him in the United States in July
1995. Since there are no such laws for the suppression of
Free Speech in the USA or in England, locking up Mr Irving
has proven less easy, not least because his lawyer, Dr K H
Schütz of Mainz, Germany, proved that the tape
recording proves that the speaker made none of the
statements contained in the indictment as reproduced in
translation here.
When this was pointed out to the Judge trying Günter Deckert in June 1996, he said
- that even though Mr Irving did not make the statements, he intended to; and
- that Mr Deckert knew of Mr Irving's (alleged) intention.
Two more years' jail for Deckert, father of a young family. At this time (November 1998), like other victims of the German campaign against free speech, he is still in jail in Germany (address for correspondence and support):
Herr Günter Deckert
politischer Häftling
Staatsgefängnis
Schönbornstrasse 32
76646 Bruchsal, Germany
[OUR ENGLISH TRANSLATION is courtesy of the Nizkor site. It is characteristic of Nizkor to publish an "indictment" - which is neither more nor less than an untested allegation - as though it were a judgment obtained after due process. The FPP site will post later this year the full text of Mr Irving's 1990 lecture.][Another link ].
Mannheim, Germany, July 6, 1995
The Indictment
Mannheim District Court (case ref:(4) 5KLs 7/95):
Criminal case against David Irving for
incitement for race hatred etc.
"Dear Mr Irving,
The Mannheim Prosecutor has charged you by indictment dated May 19, 1995 with Incitement to race hatred, Libel, and Defamation of the memory of the dead. The basis for this charge is a lecture which you delivered on September 2, 1990 in the Engelbrecht House at Weinheim on the Hergstrasse, in the course of which it is alleged that you made the following remarks:
- There were no gassings at Auschwitz;
- The Führer knew nothing of gassings, nor could he, because there were none;
- There were never any Gas chambers in Auschwitz;
- In Auschwitz less than 70,000 Jews died from epidemics and the like;
- There is now a gigantic Holocaust industry;
- The gas chambers shown to tourists are dummies built by the Poles post-war;
- The German tax payers have had to pay around l6 billion Deutsch marks as a punishment for Auschwitz, for a dummy.
As the assistance of a defense attorney is mandatory in
the first instance at assize courts, I ask you to inform me
within two weeks whether you will be appointing an attorney
authorised in the Federal Republic of Germany to handle your
defence, or which authorised attorney is to be assigned by
the court to you as a defence attorney. If such information
is not received here within the appointed time, the court
will appoint an attorney of its own choosing to defend
you.
The President, Nusselt,
Presiding Judge at Assize Court."
