Zee News - `I won't be silenced,` says Irving

Historian David Irving, jailed by an Austrian court for denying the Holocaust, refused on Wednesday to apologise for offending victims of the Nazi death camps and said he would not be silenced. Irving, 67, told Sky Television he believed historians should be allowed to question official versions of history and said freedom of speech was the "right to be wrong". "I come from a free country and I'm not going to let anybody silence me," he said. Irving was sentenced to three years in prison on Monday for denying the murder of 6 million Jews. Austria's state prosecutor filed an appeal on Tuesday to lengthen the sentence. siehe auch: Getting Jailed For Denying The Holocaust. David Irving recently got sentenced to three years in jail for his writings about the Holocaust, or his belief in the lack thereof, Let Irving the anti-Semite `howl his idiocy in freedom'. Last winter, on a cold and black night, I went to hear the Holocaust denier David Irving speak at the University of Colorado. I arrived early to get a good seat, and soon after me came five huge young men, all of them looking like skinheads. I glared at them, and they glared at me. For a moment I feared there and then that I was going to meet my maker, but it turned out that when Irving himself started to speak, the skinheads of my fertile imagination rose as one, unfurled an Israeli flag and announced themselves as Jewish protesters -- a near case of my being a casualty of friendly fire, Thoughts on David Irving, EDITORIAL: Jail makes Irving martyr for Holocaust deniers. No right-thinking person ought to have entertained the ludicrous ideas of self-confessed holocaust denier David Irving. The historian, whose offensive writings have for years caused international controversy (and which induced the New Zealand Government to bar him from a speaking engagement lest his message pollute our minds) was this week jailed in Austria for denying the holocaust, 'David, what on earth would Mother think?'. For 68 years, Nicholas Irving has lived in the shadow of his twin, the reviled historian and Hitler apologist who was jailed last week for three years. Here, he tells of the trials of growing up with a brother who even at the age of six was giving the Nazi salute, From his cell, just two days after he recanted his views on the Holocaust, David Irving reverts to extremism. As he starts a three-year sentence in Austria, the historian continues to voice his controversial views, Is David Irving any different from a racist skinhead? LIBERAL angst alights on some very odd causes. Acres of newsprint and innumerable hours of broadcasting time have been devoted to tortured discussion of David Irving's temporary fate - three years in an Austrian slammer after being convicted of Holocaust denial, Holocaust denier faces longer jail-term after u-turn on retraction. Far-right author David Irving's repudiation of his views on the Holocaust and Hitler's role in it has not lasted very long. In a prison interview just days after he told an Austrian court he had been wrong to deny the Holocaust, he reverted to insisting that the slaughter in Nazi death camps was exaggerated, and that Jews "bear blame for what happened". His latest statements, made just two days after he was convicted of Holocaust denial, could see him end up back in court. Prosecutors are demanding an increase in his jail sentence, and the Austrian supreme court must now decide whether he goes down for the full 10 years, Holocaust denial occupation of cynics, lunatics. In some recess of David Irving's reptile brain, he knows that his indefensible imprisonment is helping his side. His side consists of all the enemies of open societies. Irving, born in England in 1938, was a prodigy of perversity, asking for a copy of ''Mein Kampf'' as a school prize. He grew up to be a ''moderate fascist'' - his description - historian who has made a career of arguing, in many books and incessant speeches, that although many Jews died of disease and hardship during the Second World War, nothing like the Holocaust - 6 million victims of industrialized murder - occurred, Irving repeats Holocaust denial. Jailed British historian David Irving has again said he does not believe Hitler presided over a systematic attempt to exterminate Jews in Europe. During his trial in Austria, Irving said he had changed his mind over claims the Holocaust did not happen. But, speaking from his cell, he asked BBC News why, if such a programme existed, "so many survived", Irving repeats Holocaust denial