David Irving
Letter to the Editor of
The New York
Times
The New York Times
London, April 3, 1996
Sir, Yours faithfully,
I hope that readers who obtain the book, which is already on
sale in London and being reviewed, will find his fears
unjustified; and that a balanced reading of the entire work
will provide a better overall feel than the quotations which
he has selected.
May I remark briefly on his little cameo of myself? "Only 10
days ago," writes Mr Rich, "a Munich court upheld an order
barring him from entering Germany, where Holocaust denial is
a crime."
Is Mr Rich suggesting that I have preached what he calls
Holocaust denial in my book? Is he advocating that the
United States should act in the same dismal fashion as
modern Germany, adopting the same restrictions on free
speech -- illegal under the UN Charter of Human Rights -- as
were perfected by other, less illustrious Germans and by Dr
Goebbels himself not so long ago?
Those restrictions levied against me culminated in 1993: On
Jan. 13, a Munich court fined me $22,000 for speaking one
sentence, an historical opinion, in a public lecture (words
which the Polish authorities concerned have now publicly
confirmed were true). The court permitted no defence
evidence.
On Jul. 1, as I sat in the German federal archives for my
final hour's work on the now-published biography, the
president of the archives personally informed me that their
ministry of the interior had ordered me banned from the
building with immediate effect. I was to pack within minutes
and leave -- becoming the first historian ever to be so
treated -- on the grounds that my continued work in the
archives was "not in the interests of the German people." (I
glimpsed Heinrich Himmler's daughter working on her father's
files as I was ushered out).
On Nov. 13 as I arrived to lecture to students of Munich
university on world-wide problems of freedom of speech, I
was handed an expulsion order by the city's political
police.
As Mr Rich correctly writes, only ten days ago a Munich
court upheld this order. I am sure that he would in fairness
have added, had he known, that the judge reserved the
grounds for his decision, and two days later, after it had
been published in newspapers around the world, privately
notified my attorney that he has now withdrawn his
decision in its entirety . Evidently the lay
assessors were refusing to go along with him, something of a
rarity in German law.
We shall see. As in history, on some matters the jury is
still out.
David Irving
