Holocaust denier Irving asked to leave book fair

Organisers of a Polish book fair today asked British writer David Irving, who was jailed in Austria for denying the Holocaust, to leave the event.

Irving had been scheduled to present his books at an event organised by British publisher Focal Point, said Grzegorz Guzowski, head of the Ars Polonia company, which organised the Warsaw International Book Fair.

Guzowski said that, when organisers were alerted to the nature of Irving’s work, he told the writer to go.

“I told him his message was in violation of Polish law and that I would not allow him to deliver it at the book fair premises, and I asked him to leave,” Guzowski said.

“At first he refused and started shouting that there is no freedom of speech and that Poland is not a democratic country, but eventually he left,” he added.

Irving was sentenced in February 2006 to three years under an Austrian law that applies to “whoever denies, grossly plays down, approves or tries to excuse” the Nazi genocide or other Nazi crimes against humanity. The charges stemmed from two speeches he gave in Austria in 1989.

He was released after a court converted two-thirds of his three-year sentence into probation.

In Poland, denying the Holocaust is a crime that can carry a prison term. However, Irving is not currently under investigation there.