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Real History and putting a Watch on History Index to the Traditional Enemies of Free Speech Alphabetical index (text) [images added by this website] Friday March 29, 1996 Britain criticized for rejecting Holocaust denial law BERNARD JOSEPHS London Jewish Chronicle LONDON (JTA) — British Home Secretary Michael Howard has come under fire from Jewish leaders for declining to join his European Union counterparts in declaring Holocaust denial a criminal
offense in each of their countries. Howard’s refusal last week at a E.U. meeting in Brussels to seek a British law against Holocaust denial brought a strong response from the Jewish Board of Deputies , which said in a statement that it “deeply regretted” his decision.
Howard cited British freedom-of-speech laws during the Brussels meeting, where other E.U. countries said they feared that Holocaust-deniers would use countries like England as a base for spreading hate literature to E.U. states that have banned such activities. To counter those fears, Howard agreed to a compromise E.U. resolution that each of the organization’s 15 member states would seize racist literature published with the clear intention of inciting racial hatred.
The Board of Deputies , which represents Britain’s 300,000 Jews, said in its statement that laws criminalizing Holocaust denial were already on the books in Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Spain, Switzerland and Lithuania.
The Hungarian government was considering such legislation [ they subsequently refused to introduce it ] and the Dutch courts had also ruled against Holocaust denial, the statement added. “It is sad that Britain is isolated in this way,” said board president Eldred Tabachnik , who also serves as president of the European Jewish Congress.
Holocaust denial, he added, was a matter of grave concern “not only for Jews and other victims of Nazism, but for all democratic forces determined that neo-Nazi ideology should not be allowed to acquire political legitimacy in Europe.”
Arrest and imprisonment of David Irving in Austria Our dossier on the origins of anti-semitism June 22, 1992 the Austrian ambassador in London writes to Board of Deputies of British Jews on promising to arrest as they have demanded The above news item is reproduced without editing other than typographical 2007