According to German state-run broadcaster, Deutsche Welle:
A court in Detmold on Friday sentenced Ursula Haverbeck to eight months in jail on charges of sedition. The presiding judge ruled out the possibility of parole and said that Haverbeck had a lack of "any kind of respect" and that she had made more offensive comments in the courtroom.It should be noted that Ursula Haverbeck is well known for her extremist right-wing views, and has run afoul of German hate speech laws in the past-with courts having previously given her fines and another suspended sedition sentence, according to Fox News.
Haverbeck is expected to appeal against the sentencing. In Germany, anyone who publicly denies, endorses or plays down the extermination of Jews during Adolf Hitler's regime can be sentenced to a maximum of five years in jail.
Haverbeck was found guilty of writing a letter to Detmold's mayor, Rainer Heller, saying it was "clearly recognizable" that Auschwitz was nothing more than a labor camp. She wrote her message at the time when the Detmold court was trying Reinhold Hanning, a former guard who served at the Auschwitz concentration camp.
Just last year Haverbeck went on trial for proclaiming that the Holocaust was "the biggest and longest-lasting lie in history." However, even if her speech is wrong and hateful, this woman, like everyone else, deserves not to be silenced.
Wikipedia explains German hate speech laws as:
Volksverhetzung, in English "incitement of the masses", "instigation of the people", is a concept in German criminal law that refers to incitement to hatred against segments of the population and refers to calls for violent or arbitrary measures against them, including assaults against the human dignity of others by insulting, maliciously maligning, or defaming segments of the population. It is often applied to, though not limited to, trials relating to Holocaust denial in Germany.In the U.S., incitement of violence is criminal, but "assaults against human dignity of others by insulting, malicious maligning, or defaming segments of the population" are considered an exercise of free speech, and are protected under the First Amendment.
Essentially, German law has criminalized speech as a means of controlling political discourse-meaning the government will tell you what is acceptable to say, and who is fair game to malign.
For example, during Carnival in Germany political satire and fancy costumes are common themes, with many German cities holding float parades, of which many depict political themes. Floats maligning U.S President Donald Trump were common, and in one instance depicting him with a decapitated head held up high by the Statue of Liberty.
There were numerous other floats making fun of nationalist European leaders and right-wing parties. One float in Düsseldorf, showed President Trump standing next to a blond Hitler, along with France's Marine Le Pen, and the Netherlands' Geert Wilders.
Germany tradition prides itself on Narrenfreiheit ("jesters' freedom") to mock the powerful-with Germany's state-run Deutsche Welle news agency proclaiming, "German jesters take on kings for 2017 Carnival."
For those that found the violent depiction of right-wing politicians objectionable, prominent German journalist Christian Thiels was quick to remind the public that, "It's called 'freedom of satire'. You don't have to like it or find it tasteful but it is part of free speech."
Yet, when the residents of the small German town of Bad Bergzabern attempted to mock Chancellor Angela Merkel and her refugee policy there was a starkly different response.
A non-political group of locals showed up with a float of German Chancellor Angela Merkel behind prison bars, with the caption: "This is how traitors end up." Essentially, the German equivalent of the popular U.S election slogan used by many Trump supporters for Hillary Clinton: "Lock her up."
The very next day a police complaint was filed, and police, along with the State Attorney of Landau district opened an investigation against the subversives who dared poke fun at Merkel.
Interestingly, the same German police and legal system that took weeks to open an investigation in the wake of mass sexual assaults in the city of Cologne on New Year's Eve, and eventually closed most of the cases after a year-long investigation, immediately began a criminal investigation into the group of locals.
Germany's state-run Südwestrundfunk broadcaster wrote:
"The float showed the head of the Chancellor behind the prison bars. According to a police statement, by Tuesday many residents had complained about the float and a case had been filed. The State Attorney's office in Landau is examining if the depiction of the Chancellor is a punishable offense."Before German law enforcement could make any assessments, the mayor's office of Bad Bergzabern issued a statement that from now on, all Carnival floats were first to apply for mayoral approval.
"The float was registered by a private group from South-Palatinate Kapellen-Drusweiler. The office-holders of the group told SWR that they do not belong to any right-wing group, and only wanted it to be a thought-provoking exercise."
See how that works?
If you make fun of people, or groups, that the government approves of maligning, it is considered political satire and free speech applies. Yet if you make fun of, or disrespect, someone within the elite power structure of Germany it is considered a criminal offense.
While some speech may be extreme and repulsive, the prohibition on certain ideas, even the most repugnant, being put into the public marketplace of ideas is a fast track to totalitarian governmental control-essentially legitimizing the "thought police."
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - Hall in Friends of Voltaire
"Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. For when you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you." - Friedrich Nietzsche.
Reader Comments
Here we have a witness, I detect, who is being jailed for her belief in her subjective beliefs in her perception and memory of reality, by a judge and system who
1) weren't there; and,
2) incorrectly see themselves as truthful and objective.
As jfm5959 so pointedly states."Gosh, you'd think they had something to hide."*
R.C.
*Sarcasm.
RC
Labour camp, concentration camp, internment camp. The header you use doesn't change the actualities that were.
Jurgen the German: Weak satire from Harry Enfield...[Link]
However, sentencing people for their views, when they don't physically harm others, is a fascism in pure form, I would say. Some people believe that there was a virgin lady who bore a religious leader for example - there was time when denying this would warrant a death sequence (in my country it still can land you in hot water, with a criminal sentence (!), thankfully not capital one, but most jurisdictions don't care). I don't think that if people are allowed to believe something which obviously isn't true, should be divided into some better and worse classes, just because their particular belief is protected more by human law.
I have no firm opinion as to what actually happened at Auschwitz but I do know that the "gas-chamber" shown to tourists was built by the Soviets after War's end yet David Irving (previously an acclaimed Historian of the period) was locked up for saying it. This despite the curator of the Auschwitz Museum having confirmed that fact.
I also know that when shown an inward opening door with a glass panel in it and told that it belonged to a gas chamber into which human beings were crowded then gassed to death, my first thought was "Now wait a minute, maybe there is cause for debate".
History needs no law to support it. That is usually found only in totalitarian States.
Holocaust deniers should be openly debated. Employing the Law to silence debate is not going to end it - more likely it will have the opposite effect. I know that, in my case, the above examples have led me to believe that much more inquiry is needed. The noted Holocaust historian Raul Hilberg said as much.
Well, you could argue that a labour camp in which the inmates are systematically worked to death, is a death camp, but then again, that would just be another example of how people would rather argue over nomenclature than the actual events that took place.
This woman was ALIVE at the time, and actually LIVED THRU the period, so it's more than feasable, that the things she saw and experienced were contrary to the LIES being peddled today by the so called Winners.
I have been questioning the alleged mysterious 6 million figure now for many years, because this weird figure keeps cropping up WELL BEFORE WW 2 even started. It's also claimed the Russians also killed the same number before WW 2.
So what is it with this magical number that keeps cropping up ?
B.T.W. estimates of the people killed by the U.S. Government since WW 2 are around 25 million and counting.
So who are the most evil folks around here ????
However, most of the camps there were no death camps at all, and these later converted were not planned as it from the beginning. Only later, when policy of Germans changed, there were death camps. Most of these camps were to gain revenue from slave labour, including the joint-ventures with Americans.
In Auschwitz in particular, there was up to 1.1 million of Jews killed (from all over Europe), about 150 thousand Poles (these which were identified as Jews don't count here), 23 thousand Roma people, and about 12 thousand Soviet POWs and other.
At the time is was illegal to criticise the government and just a conspiracy theory to suggest such atrocities were occurring
Maybe in 50 years it will be illegal to deny the atrocities caused by current American foreign policy
I think you'll find on the internet there's enough testimony from Auschwitz, Buchenwald, Dachau and Belsen survivors that were ALIVE at the time, and actually LIVED THRU the period to keep you going for about a month, old son.
History is packaged. History, by its very nature, is a package.
'Holocaust' = Package
'Holocaust denier' = Package.
The problem with 'the holocaust mythos', and conversely with that whole 'history is written by the victors' schtick, is that it gives every so-called 'truth seeker', 'revisionist', etc, an excuse to dismiss the testimony of every Jew who suffered in WWII as a bunch of self-serving, wily, artful, Israel-buttressing fibs, which mainly ain't the case, although sometimes is.
No one had a monopoly on suffering in WWII. No one had a monopoly on selective truth either.
The whole illusion of her childhood would have been shattered by the looting and raping victors ... I can't blame her if she refuses to believe the subsequent history
Like the majority of her homey contemporaries, she's pissed off Germany lost the war.
Unlike the majority of her homey contemporaries, she's pissed off Germany lost the war, but is unable to say "Ah well", "So what?" or "Just as well, really".
"Everyone did it!!!"
Virtually every Jewish man, woman and child rounded up from France, The Channel Islands, Holland, Poland, etc, and shipped off to concentration camps.
"There was no extermination programme!!!"
Spurious evidence Zyklon B was used as human 'pest control'.
"It didn't happen!!! Therefore nothing else happened either!!!!"
"There was an extermination programme but that nice Mr Hitler didn't know anything about it".
Dumb Ass.
Of course, you could argue that locking up some more-or-less harmless, cantankerous old lady 'cause she doesn't agree with officialised WWII history is a little bit of hysterical state fascism, and I'd tend to agree with that, but they're going to argue "Ah vell, doing zis kind of thing has kept der peace for seventy plus years" or whatever.
Back to the future...
The current difficulties facing people on the right who disagree with mass-immigration, so-called 'Islamisation', and according to some; 'forced multiculturalism', is really the same bunch of stuff faced by the Hitler gang, i.e. the only way these issues can be dealt with is to adopt measures that are almost certain to lead to bloody ethnic war, actual genocide, or genocide-by-default.
Ursula Haverbeck: The Panorama Interview, with English Subtitles....[Link]
Auschwitz Secrets Of The Dead. The Story Of Escapee Rudolf Vrba....[Link]
Die Befreiung Von Auschwitz (includes 1945 original Red Army footage)....[Link]
Occupying Germany....[Link]
It is VERBOTEN....Why...???...To me it speaks for it self...The evidence, if you sincerely look for it, will destroy the illusion.
What's that saying about the truth having nothing to hide.
I'm sure non of these sites were holiday resorts but man have the Zionists exploited the situation to the extreme.
Poor innocent Joos...The eternal victims...They have never & will never harm anyone else...except for Goyim...and other Jews that aren't Zionists.