David Irving | ||||||
Documents on the International Campaign for Real History
Posted Monday, January 19, 2009
© Focal Point 2009
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David Irving explains: Scanning old stuff I came across this early interview of Bente Høgh, about four months after I met her. I had just brought back the Goebbels diaries from the KGB archives in Moscow on July 4, 1992, and the tabloid press in London and the world was howling with rage at my scoop. They door-stepped our address in Duke Street for a week, hoping to catch a picture of the fabled "stunning blonde", and finally got her picture as she scurried to the convenience store next door. Most of the story is fictitious, and the children told me that all these so-called "quotations" were words that the two journalists had invented and put into their mouths. I said there was no need to apologize. The Daily Mail has been gunning for me since May 1, 1959.
London, July 16, 1992
REVEALED: AMAZING PARADE OF WOMEN IN GOEBBELS HISTORIAN'S LIFE Stunning blonde who irons David Irving's shirts
By VIKKI ORVICE and PAUL HARRIS
THE blonde in the life of Hitler apologist David Irving certainly doesn't rank as the most envied woman in the world.
Irving describes women as 'mental chewing-gum'; claims they were created only for decoration or child bearing, and is labelled by one of his own daughters as a tyrannical chauvinist.
Dentist's daughter Bente Hogh, his new girlfriend, appears not to mind that his Mayfair flat is adorned with Hitler memorabilia -and she hasn't yet mentioned the photograph of his ex-wife, Pilar, which looks down on the bed.
Irving is, well, 'different', the stunningly attractive Bente said yesterday. 'I like him because of that. I like people who are different, who are a little eccentric.
'He is smart, and has a good sense of humour. It would have been easy for him to give up his beliefs, to stop writing and speaking out, but he hasn't. I respect him for that.
'Around the house, he does more than I do. I iron his shirts and he complains and then ends up doing them again himself. As for his views on women, I take them with a pinch of salt.'
Danish-born Bente does not subscribe to the Right-wing historian's view that the Holocaust never happened, or that the Auschwitz gas chambers were built after the war for tourists. [Website note: Signs on the sign admit that the gas chamber on show was built in 1948].
Scared
Nor does she complain when he scolds her over the ironing, even though, as he puts it, she 'trained as a woman'.
She spoke for the first time about her relationship with the 54-year-old father of four girls, which in the last few days has seen her abused by anti-Nazi protesters.
Irving, employed by the Sunday Times for its Goebbels diaries series, was with her in a restaurant near the flat they share when he was attacked and abused by people outraged at his Holocaust theories.
'I was really scared after that,' said Bente. 'It made me feel paranoid, but you cannot look over your shoulder all the time. Some of my friends do not like David but everyone has different opinions.
'I knew who he was before I moved in, but it didn't bother me. He has his opinions and is entitled to them, and I have mine.
'I don't agree with his views on the Holocaust. It annoys me that people assume that, just because I am with him, I must do. I think it is interesting that we have opposing views. It is challenging.'
Contract
Irving has always been surrounded by women. He was brought up by his mother after she and his naval officer father separated, has four daughters and is frequently seen with female friends.
There are photographs of the other women everywhere in his flat, alongside framed pages of Hitler's newspaper Völkischer Beobachter and a little tin Führer statuette.
Bente came to London to work as an au pair eight years ago. Irving says he met her in March after asking friends to help him rent out two spare rooms. Bente and Birgit Bihler moved in.
Irving says, almost as a challenge, that dark-haired Birgit, who speaks with a Germanic accent, is Jewish.[Website note: She is not, nor was this stated.]
At the West End hotel where she works, she would say only: 'I didn't know who David Irving was when I signed the contract for the flat. I do now.'
Bente pays no rent while Birgit pays £60. Irving says: 'If I say Bente isn't my girlfriend, I will offend her. If I say "Yes", I will offend the others.'
Irving and Pilar, his Spanish-born wife of 20 years, divorced in the early 1980s. She said:
'Some of the things he says you cannot believe. I couldn't believe them for 20 years.'
She recalled some of her husband's somewhat revisionist views: 'Marriage is a woman's natural place' . . . 'It is their duty to procreate' . . . 'Women are conniving' ... 'women are in the entertainment business.'
Mrs Irving, of Maida Vale, West London, went on: 'That's for the women he is with now. They are stupid if they just stay there and take it.'
Joke
None of Irving's daughters is now close to him. Beatrice, 25, hasn't even told him her address in Lewisham, South East London, since returning from Australia five months ago. 'I don't agree with his opinions and I don't even want to be asked about them,' she said.
Daughter Pilar, a 27-year-old artist, said: 'My views and my family's views are totally opposed to his, and anyone who reads what he says must find them totally laughable.'
She described her father as 'tyrannical' and remembered, even in childhood, 'his extreme chauvinism'.
Paloma, 26, who works for an advertising company, recently married her boss who has an unmistakeably Polish name. Irving was not invited to the wedding.
'I'm completely opposed to his beliefs,' she said. 'In terms of women, what he says is a joke.'
At home, Irving put a Hitler's monogrammed spoon into the dishwasher and said that 'next time' he would like to have four sons.
Without even the flicker of a smile, he added: 'It can be arranged. There are ways.'
GIRLFRIEND: Bente (above), who does not agree with Irving on the Holocaust. As for his ideas about women, 'I take them with a pinch of salt.'
LODGER: Birgit (right). At first she didn't know who Irving was, she said.
FAMILY: Left to right, daughters Pilar and Josephine, Mrs Irving and Beatrice
SEXIST SAYINGS OF A NAZI APOLOGIST • 'Marriage is a detour, Hitler spotted that. He had all the normal sex drives but he knew that if he got involved with a woman, she would be nagging and bitching and asking about the washing.'
• 'One reason my marriage lasted 20 years was that in every dispute, my
• 'Once women have children, they aren't interested in men any more.'
• 'The employment of a female should be made a criminal offence.'
• 'Women always move things. They never put the towels back straight.'
David Irving's Photos | David Irving's Books (free downloads)
The Spectator interviews Benté Hogh: "Sleeping with the Enemy"
Free download: David Irving: The Mare's Nest | and read a chapter of his memoirs, The Scoop
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