News from Rome on Sholem Aleichem's birthday: Irving says he's neither a Nazi nor a Holocaust denier

In a extensive article in this morning's Independent Irving once again claims he is not a Holocaust denier.

The article also lists the statements Irving made in his Austrian speeches, which he gave to a audience of 300, which got him into this trouble.

In the first, he said that Kristallnacht was conducted by "unknowns" who put on SA uniforms. This, of course, was completely discredited by documents presented at my trial. Documents which came from Irving's work.

He also contended that the diary of Anne Frank could not have been written by her because the Biro [ball point pen] wasn't invented until 1949. Of course, the diary is NOT written in ball point pen, as Dutch forensic experts have shown.

He cited the research by Fred Leuchter, whom the paper describes as "the (now discredited) American execution technician." [Attention Northwestern University readers: please forward this article to the editors of the Daily Northwestern. Somehow the Independent could figure out that Leuchter was discredited and the Daily editors could not].

Leuchter based his claim that no humans were murdered at Auschwitz on the fact that he found more traces of cyanide in the areas where clothes were deloused than in did in areas where humans were "claimed to have been" murdered.

Of course, Leuchter -- who is just a scam artist and a weird one at that -- was not aware of a basic fact known to most high school kids who have studied biology. Louse and the like are far more resistant to cyanide than humans, therefore, it makes perfect sense to have found greater traces of cyanide in the areas where clothes and objects were deloused.

In his second Austrian lecture he made a statement which would subsequently become part of his repertoire: "Auschwitz is a legend, just like the Turin Shroud", and "the existence of witnesses proves that there was no mass extermination".

He also told an Austrian journalist: "I stand by what I said. There were no gas chambers at Auschwitz."

His lawyer says Irving will not "grandstand" in court and that he has abandoned his extremist views.

Irving says he changed his views in 1992 when he saw two documents, a discovery, which the Independent notes, "he kept to himself until recently."

One document was a radio message sent to Adolf Eichmann in 1943, reporting that during the previous 12 months more than a million people had died in Treblinka, Sobibor and Belzec concentration camps.

This all makes no sense -- except maybe in David Irving's world of "I can say whatever I want whenever I want and no one will check out what I say." [In fact, he was right. No one did check it out until he forced me and my wonderful legal team to do so. Pfft, his claims collapsed.]

It also makes no sense because, for ten weeks we sat in a London court listening to him deny the Holocaust, argue that there were no gas chambers, and spout antisemitism and racism.

Richard Evans, who did such a stellar job of researching Irving's mangling of history, told the paper: "One shouldn't believe a word he says."

Ditto.

Oh what Sholem Aleichem could have done with the likes of a David Irving.

And now I am off to see the Arch of Titus. It's comforting to recall that the regime of the people who destroyed the ancient Temple and took the menorah and other object depicted on the arch are no more.

As the partisans during the Shoah [Holocaust] sang: Mir seinen da.

And so it is.