A German grandmother aged 87 has been sentenced to ten months in jail for denying the Holocaust and saying Auschwitz was “just a labour camp”.
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Ursula Haverbeck-Wetzel says there’s no proof that Auschwitz was a death camp and that that’s “only a belief”.
The notorious extremist was summoned to court, however, after declaring on television in April that “the Holocaust is the biggest and most sustainable lie in history”.
Ursula Haverbeck – dubbed as “Nazi-Oma” (Nazi grandma) – argued that “it was only a belief” as she stood trial for holocaust denial in Hamburg. Haverbeck-Wetzel tried to goad the court into proving to her Auschwitz was a death camp, saying, per RT.com, “You know about it [Auschwitz] only through the grapevine-like me”.
She was also once chairwoman of a fascist training centre – shut down in 2008 for spreading Nazi propaganda. “Neither do I have to prove to you the world is round”, Magistrate Bjoern Joensson said. The 94-year-old man was sentenced to four years in prison for contributing to the mass killings that took place at the Auschwitz camp.
Judge Björn Jönsson struggled to maintain his temper with the elderly Nazi after she said she shlouldn’t be punished for the crime again as she had already been fined twice and given a suspended sentence for previous Holocaust denials.
On issuing his ruling on Thursday, Joensson said it was “deplorable that this woman, who is still so active given her age, uses her energy to spread such hair-raising nonsense”. “She is a lost cause”, he added, AFP reported.
Nevertheless, the recalcitrant Holocaust denier is not without supporters.
She left the courtroom to applause.
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Once the trial was over, Ursula Haverbeck said to the Tageszeitung newspaper that her supporters will not accept the sentence she was given.
