London, Sunday, October 17, 1999

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Below: Germar Rudolf addresses an appreciative audience
at Real History, USA in Cincinnati, on Sept 26, 1999

German neo-Nazi fugitive is found hiding in Britain

By Jessica Berry and Chris Hastings

A NEO-NAZI who fled Germany after being convicted of inciting racial hatred has been discovered by The Telegraph hiding in Britain.

Germar Rudolf -- who is regarded as a hero by far-Right extremists around the world -- absconded in 1995 rather than serve a 14-month jail sentence for breaching Germany's Holocaust denial legislation. His writings which questioned the notion that millions of Jews had died in the gas chambers of Auschwitz were found to be in breach of laws designed to combat anti-Semitism and protect the memory of Hitler's victims.

Police in Germany who still have a warrant out for Rudolf's arrest have been looking for him ever since he left his home in Stuttgart. But The Telegraph has tracked down the 34-year-old father of two, who has been living in a series of safe houses on the South East coast.

Rudolf, who now uses his former wife's maiden name of Scheerer, is currently staying in Tunbridge Wells, Kent, but has also used addresses in Hastings and the nearby coastal village of Pevensey Bay. He confirms that, during his stay in Britain, he has forged links with far-Right extremists including members of the National Front and the British National Party. He has also admitted making contact with David Irving, the outspoken historian and writer.

Rudolf has continued to challenge perceptions of the Holocaust via the internet and his own publishing operation which he runs from a PO box in Hastings. He also has regular visits from family and friends in Germany who keep his exact whereabouts in England a closely guarded secret.

Rudolf refused to confirm his address to The Telegraph after the paper made contact with him through a business associate. Instead he insisted on being interviewed in a cafe at London's Victoria railway station on a busy Friday afternoon.

The 6ft 5in figure, who arrived at platform ten unshaven and casually dressed, said: "In Britain I work as an Holocaust revisionist 24 hours a day. My work has brought me into contact with people on the far Right. I have met leading members of the National Front and the British National Party while I have been in England. I have also made contact with David Irving.

"But I want to make clear that I am not a member of any far-Right organisations. I am not a total apologist for the Nazis like a lot of people who support my work. I miss Germany but I am a political prisoner who came here because I wanted to be free."

Rudolf, who once served in the Luftwaffe, first attracted the attention of the authorities in 1993 while he was studying for a PhD. He allowed Otto Ernst Remer -- the Nazi general who put down the 1944 attempted putsch against Hitler -- to copy his work on Auschwitz and circulate it among leading judges, politicians and religious leaders. Rudolf's work had initially attracted little publicity, except for praise from a handful of Right-wingers. But in the uproar that followed the circulation of Remer's report, Rudolf was branded a neo-Nazi and expelled from his university course. He was charged with three different counts of inciting racial hatred.

He was not held in custody and fled the country after he was found guilty of the first charge and sentenced to 14 months in jail. Travelling alone, Rudolf initially went to Spain where he stayed with Remer who was living there in exile.

But Rudolf soon got wind that German officials were on his trail and he fled again -- this time to England. The family arrived in Britain in 1996 and rented a three-bedroom bungalow in the coastal village of Pevensey Bay 10 miles outside Hastings. Rudolf used his wife's maiden name and told his landlord that he was a freelance journalist.

Sheila Evans, Rudolf's former landlady, said: "I remember he said he was a writer working for journals in Germany. I was struck by how clean he left the house when he left. He stripped it bare. I think he was trying to cover his tracks."

The ease with which Rudolf has been able to continue his revisionist work will cause uproar in Germany and Britain. It has intensified calls for the introduction of Holocaust denial and race hate legislation in Britain.

Andrew Dismore, the Labour MP for Hendon and a member of the Council Against Anti-Semitism, said: "I think a cause like this can only strengthen the case for Holocaust denial legislation to be introduced in Britain. I hope the German authorities will take immediate action to deal with this man. I intend to refer the case to the Director of Public Prosecutions."

Lord Janner, the chairman of the Holocaust Education Trust, said: "Holocaust denial legislation is long overdue in Britain. I intend to refer this particular case to the Home Secretary."

Sabiner Mylander, the prosecutor in Stuttgart, said: "This man absconded after he was sentenced to 14 months in prison. There is a warrant out for his arrest."

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Related links: The Sunday Telegraph unaccountably added a link to Ann Tusa's vicious and libellous Nov 1996 review of David Irving's book Nuremberg, the Last Battle.

Our opinion

  German Rudolf was a research chemist at the Max Planck Institute in Germany when he submitted a thesis on the permanence of cyanide compounds in brickwork. the paper was highly praised by his colleagues and by scientists around the nation. This paper was used, without his consent, by defence lawyers in the "Auschwitz Lie" trial of General Ernst Otto Remer, left (Auschwitz Lie is the formal title given to the offence by the German authorities). At the demand of Ignatz Bubis, Rudolf was dismissed from the institute and deprived of a degree. The German police arrested him, seized his papers, searched his house, and convicted him of an offence under Germany's notorious laws for the suppression of free speech. It is the kind of thing that could not happen in Britain . . . or could it?