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Friday, December 4, 2020
Holocaust denied again
Haverbeck has to go back to prison
A few months after her release from prison, Ursula Haverbeck has to start another prison sentence. The 92-year-old is undoing an online video in which she once again denies the Holocaust. The court has already lost all hope of intuition.
Ursula Haverbeck, a 92-year-old Holocaust denier, has been sentenced to another prison term by a Berlin court. The Tiergarten District Court imposed a one-year prison sentence without parole. The trial concerned an online video in which Haverbeck claims that Auschwitz was not an extermination camp and that six million people did not die in the Holocaust.
The defendant had “denied and downplayed the Nazi crimes” and did so in a way “likely to disturb the public peace,” said the judge presiding over the verdict. The 92-year-old man was only released from prison in October 2020. In August 2017, the Verden district court sentenced her to eight incidents of incitement to a two-year prison term without parole.
Haverbeck made the new statements about the Holocaust in a video with a far-right activist who asked him why he was imprisoned. The prosecution demanded one year and three months in prison during the trial. Haverbeck’s attorney, who has represented right-wing extremist clients for decades, argued that the 92-year-old did not know the video should be released. I just wanted to explain why she was convicted in 2017.
“Making fun of the victims of the Holocaust”
The court did not obey. Haverbeck’s statements represented “a mockery of the victims”, she was concerned about the “diffusion and reinforcement of National Socialist ideas”, and the denial and trivialization were public. In the video, both Haverbeck and the right-wing extremist activist repeatedly addressed the audience directly. Therefore, it is obvious that the video was intended to be published and that the convicted person was also aware of it.
Haverbeck’s old age was also taken into account in the verdict, the presiding judge said. The multiple pertinent biases could no longer be led to behavior change through punishment, she was “hopelessly lost.” In this case, the prison sentence is not aimed at re-education, but rather “to punish misconduct,” the judge said. Haverbeck himself stayed away from pronouncing the verdict.
