processes
Holocaust denier fails with appeal
Holocaust denier Ursula Haverbeck sits on a bench in a court corridor. ) Photo: Paul Zinken/dpa-Zentralbild/dpa
© dpa-infocom GmbH
There are still no signs of rethinking or even remorse from the 93-year-old Holocaust denier. The Berlin district court imposed a one-year prison sentence,
The notorious Holocaust denier Ursula Haverbeck failed in an appeal process in Berlin. The regional court in the capital on Friday imposed a year in prison on the 93-year-old and rejected appeals by the defendants against two convictions for sedition.
Haverbeck denied the Holocaust, the judge said. There is no sign of remorse or rethinking from the 93-year-old. The regional court negotiated two proceedings, which ended in the first instance with imprisonment without probation.
Haverbeck had appealed against the decisions of the district court in Berlin-Tiergarten. In 2017, the widow from North Rhine-Westphalia was sentenced to six months in prison because she is said to have said at an event in Berlin-Lichtenrade that the Holocaust did not happen. At the end of 2020, she was sentenced to a year in prison for allegedly denying the Holocaust in an interview that was published online.
No parole despite old age
The district court upheld both judgments. A total sentence of one year in prison is appropriate to the crime and guilt, said the presiding judge. Despite the defendant’s advanced age, the execution of the sentence could not be suspended because she had not shown any insight or changed her attitude during the main appeal hearing.
Haverbeck was released from prison in Bielefeld just a few days before the second conviction in Berlin. She had been serving a total of two and a half years in prison there since May 2018.
The judgment of the district court is not yet final. The 93-year-old, whose lawyer demanded acquittal, can appeal. Then the Berlin Court of Appeal would have to deal with the case.
For years, criminal courts have repeatedly had to deal with the notorious inciter. In 2004 she was convicted for the first time and received a fine. Most recently, sentences were issued without parole. Haverbeck repeatedly claimed that the Auschwitz concentration camp was not an extermination camp and that mass murder did not take place there. According to historians’ estimates, the Nazis murdered at least 1.1 million people in the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp alone.