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Unless correspondents ask us not to, this Website will post selected letters that it receives and invite open debate. |
[In November 1992 the Jewish Telegraph Agency in New York spread the rumour that David Irving had agreed to speak alongside Hizbollah and other terrorist leaders and Louis Farrakhan at a Stockholm conference. This was a lie. Deborah Lipstadt however repeated it, unverified, in her book Denying the Holocaust (Penguin Books, London, 1964). For publishing that and other such lies, many of which she made no attempt to justify, David Irving sued her for libel. The case was tried in London Jan 11-Mar 15, 2000 in London].
Now Bjorn Hanssen writes from Norway, on Monday, March 27, 2000 as follows:
I have some information regarding the so-called Anti-Zionist Conference scheduled for Sweden in November 1992:
In February 1992 Norwegian newspapers published the news that a man named Alfred Olsen was to arrange a meeting in the Peoples House (Folkets Hus) owned by the Norwegian Labour Union in Oslo March 28, 1992, with Mr. Ahmed Rami as the main speaker. The title of the lecture - "Zionism and its influence in Sweden" - was leaked to the press.
Olsen, a person of questionable mental stability, had hired the Folkets Hus in the name of an organisation called the Folkets Motstandsbevegelse (Det kristne alternativet), or "The People's Resistance Movement (The Christian Alternative)" - an extreme right-wing catholic and anti-Semitic organisation (website today: http://www.holywar.org). When Rami received the invitation from Olsen, he accepted, probably unaware that Olsen's organisation had just one member -- himself.
Rami arrived in Oslo on March 28, 1992 only to be informed by Olsen that the owners of the "Folkets Hus" had cancelled the agreement between them and Mr. Olsen. At the same time it was announced that the Police Department of Oslo had banned the meeting, fearing a riot.
About three months later, on June 18, 1992, Norway's largest newspaper Verdens Gang (circulation ca. 325.000) published a whole page article with the headline NAZI TOPS OCCUPY OSLO. The article informed that The Police department of Oslo had permitted a meeting to be held on Youngstorget in the centre of Oslo on Saturday, June 27, 1992. It was announced that the following persons should participate:
- David Irving (Verdens Gang: "Everywhere who David Irving has spoken, there have been violent confrontations between neo-Nazis and anti-racist counter demonstrators")
- Louis Farrakhan (Verdens Gang: "As leader of the organisation "The Nation of Islam" he is leading the morale revolt against the authorities, characterized by a strong anti-Semitism and a call to a use violence")
- Ahmed Rami: (Verdens Gang: "He continues to spread hatred against the Jews all over the world... In pictures he is seen sitting together with Libya's feared dictator Mohammar Gadaffi. "Gadaffi and I are very good friends", Rami has boasted)
- Fred Leuchter (Verdens Gang: "The American 'Gas chamber expert' and engineer Fred Leuchter is used as a witness for truth by the right-wing extremists for his allegations about the hoax about Auschwitz"
Verdens Gang added: "It is the first time that any of them are going to make a speech in Scandinavia. The person in charge of the arrangement is the Norwegian Alfred Olsen -- the man behind the little organisation Folkets Motstandsbevegelse - det Kristne Alternativet. Organizer Alfred Olsen is of the opinion that the 'top meeting' is a very good opportunity for Norway to show that the country is a real democracy and not a 'nazi-Zionist' dictatorship, as he himself expresses it".
In the same article there is an interview with the Jewish rabbi for the Norwegian Mosaic Society, Michael Melchior (today a minister in the Israeli government): "It is horrifying that Oslo is going to be a meeting place for these four people. Together they represent a very well organised, global movement which says that the Holocaust has never taken place."
I remember to have read a small notice in Verdens Gang some time later, where you vehemently deny any connection with Mr. Olsen and his movement, and inform that you have no plans for attending any meeting in Oslo.
It is probable that Ms Lipstadt built on fragments of this story when she wrote her book.
Related story: a Different version, Rami's
stupid 1992 prank Backfires
David Irving had
replied:
Bit by bit one finds out what has gone on behind the scenes. After the demented Mr Olsen started the hare running -- and I have never heard of Mr Olsen in my life before getting this letter -- the JTA spread the rumour worldwide. All my Scandinavian publishers took fright and cancelled their contracts with me. And "nobody" is to blame -- except Prof. Lipstadt, the "widely respected academic scholar" from Atlanta.
David Irving