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Holocaust-denier David Irving defies hotel ban

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Holocaust-denier David Irving defies hotel ban

Holocaust-denier David Irving said on Wednesday he would push ahead with his controversial trip to Germany, despite calls to ban him from every hotel in Berlin. He told The Local he had been “inundated with offers” of accommodation in the city since the German Hotel Association said its members would not allow him to stay.

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The British writer, who was banned from Germany for ten years in 1993, said he would also take a 30-strong group on a tour of Poland’s concentration camps as part of the trip in September.

Irving told The Local his group would visit concentration camps in northern Poland.

Nazis slaughtered an estimated two million Jews at the camps in 1942 and 1943 during Operation Reinhard.

They also plan to go to Hitler’s former eastern Europe headquarters, the Wolf’s Lair in northern Poland and Himmler's former headquarters Hochwald which is also in the country.

Irving’s travel ban to Germany was lifted when he successfully appealed against a Munich court’s decision to keep him out of the country until 2022, meaning he is now free to visit in September.

The 75-year-old claimed that since July when Green Party MP Volker Beck contacted the German Hotel Association (Dehoga) asking their members to not offer him accommodation, he had been flooded with offers.

In July, Dehoga manager Thomas Lengfelde said: "I trust that Irving will not be accommodated by our members.”

Asked on Wednesday by The Local whether he had found a hotel room, he replied: “Yes. I was inundated with invitations from hotels and private citizens offering me space and accommodation.”

He added he had already sorted out accommodation and a venue for his talk on September 10 before the move to ban him. He would not reveal the location of his accommodation.

“I have many close friends in Berlin,” he said.

Attendees are paying €91 to hear him speak and around $3,000 for the tour of Poland.

Irving was extradited from Germany in 1993 after being convicted of insulting the dead after he disputed that gas chambers at the Auschwitz death camp. In 1996 he unsuccessfully sued American author Deborah Lipstadt in the British courts after she called him a Holocaust denier.

He was also imprisoned in Austria in 2006 for his views on the Holocaust.

The Local sought Volker Beck for comment, but he was unavailable at the time of writing.

Tom Bristow

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