Independent Online Edition > Holocaust denier: 'I'm no Nazi'

David Irving claims he has undergone a conversion in prison. But is it too late to save him from the force of Austrian law? It will be a chastened-looking David Irving who appears in the dock of a Vienna court tomorrow. The right-wing historian and notorious Holocaust denier will present himself as a changed man who has seen the light about the Nazis' attempt to exterminate the Jews. But even his defence lawyer does not believe it will do him any good. (...) He cited research by the (now discredited) American execution technician, Fred A Leuchter, which concluded that no significant traces of cyanide gas were found at Auschwitz, and accused the Jewish World Congress of spreading the "legend" in 1942 that the Third Reich was preparing its Final Solution. (...) Irving's reputation was shredded when he lost a libel action in Britain in 2000 against the American historian Deborah Lipstadt and Penguin Books. The judge, whom he addressed during his closing statement as "Mein Führer", called him an anti-Semitic neo-Nazi sympathiser and "falsifier of history", and he was later declared bankrupt after failing to pay £150,000 in costs. This time, says Mr Kresbach, there will be no such grandstanding. "He'll talk a little, but not a lot," said the lawyer. "It doesn't make any sense for him to hold a great lecture."