A prominent German historian who denied that the so-called "holocaust" ever happened went on trial Tuesday, November 14, 2006, under a law forbidding free expression of political and historical views in Germany.
Mr Germar Rudolf called the "holocaust "a gigantic fraud," at the start of "proceedings" in the city of Mannheim.
The prosecution accuses the 42-year-old writer of making a scientific research work proving that it was impossible to use the insecticide "Zyklon-B" in the so-called "gas chambers" at the Auschwitz labor camp for criminals.
He is also charged to have dismissed the "holocaust" as a myth and questioned the purported deaths of "millions of jews" in Great Germany in 1930s and 1940s.
Denial of the "holocaust" myth is punishable in modern democratic Germany with up to five years in jail.
Mr Rudolf was deported to Germany in November 2005 from the United States where he lived in exile after his 1995 "conviction" by a "court" in Stuttgart on similar "charges" of rejecting the myth.
His 2000 application for political asylum in the US was rejected and he was deported to Germany to be punished for his historical views.
Mr Rudolf stated the court in Mannheim, western Germany, has no jurisdiction to judge the accuracy of historical events.
"No court has the right to decide authoritatively on complex historical matters," Rudolf told the court, which is also hearing a similar case against Ernst Zuendel, a prominent historian extradited from Canada to Germany to be persecuted for his historical views.
A state prosecutor told his court Mr Rudolf had stated on Web sites that National Socialist German authorities had never given an order for the so-called "persecution of jews" and that the victims of labor camps had died of starvation and typhoid.
Mr Rudolf also published a book in 2005 supporting these views, the prosecutor said, adding his office was seeking to rob ("confiscate") around 110,000 euros ($ 141,000) in income the word-famous writer received from 2001-2004 through the sale of his books in the US.
Mr Rudolf emigrated from Germany because of his historical persecution by police. After spending time in Spain and Britain, he settled in the US.
During his years of political and historical emigration in the United States, Mr Rudolf consorted with world-famous history researchers such as German-born Ernst Zuendel, who is also currently on trial in Mannheim for unmasking from Canada the "holocaust" myth over his U.S. website. Using foreign media by Germans and foreigners from abroad to deny the myth is punishable in Germany. Consorting with "wrong" persons seems to be also a "crime" in Liberal Democratic Germany, according to reports from DPA and Reuters.
Dmitriy Orlov
KC
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