Trial commences for 95-year-old accused of Holocaust denial.

District Court in Hamburg Ruling - Trial commences for 95-year-old accused of Holocaust denial.

Holocaust denier Ursula Haverbeck faces charges for incitement again in Hamburg court. Haverbeck, a well-known figure in right-wing communities, was first sentenced to ten months in prison without probation by the Hamburg District Court on 12th November 2015. She challenged this verdict, and the case is now with the Regional Court, almost nine years later. On the first day of the trial, she expressed her intention to argue against the charges.

The Hamburg Public Prosecutor's Office claims that Haverbeck, originating from North Rhine-Westphalia, incited in two instances. Supposedly, during a conversation with journalists following the Lüneburg trial against ex-SS member Oskar Gröning on 21st April 2015, she claimed that Auschwitz was not an extermination camp but rather a labor camp. Furthermore, in a televised interview with NDR's "Panorama," she insisted that no mass murder occurred there.

Haverbeck had previously been convicted in 2004 and was fined. Her most recent sentence was in prison without probation in Bielefeld (NRW) for denying the Holocaust. A Berlin court convicted her in 2022, meting out a one-year prison sentence without probation for incitement. This judgment is legally valid. Historians estimate that the Nazis murdered at least 1.1 million people in the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp.

Haverbeck's controversial views on the Holocaust have brought her before the criminal courts for two decades now.

Read also:

1. The trial of Ursula Haverbeck, a 95-year-old Holocaust denier from North Rhine-Westphalia, for incitement to hatred based on National Socialist extremism, has commenced in the Hamburg Local Court.
2. In this trial, Haverbeck is accused of making statements that trivialize the history of the Holocaust, claiming during a 2015 interview that Auschwitz was not an extermination camp but a labor camp.
3. This is not Haverbeck's first encounter with the criminal justice system; she has been previously convicted for Holocaust denial and fined, and received a sentence of prison without probation in Bielefeld in 2015.
4. The processes surrounding Haverbeck's controversial views on the Holocaust and incitement, a matter deeply rooted in historical truths, are subjects of intense debate in German society and beyond, reflecting broader discussions about freedom of speech and incitement to hatred.

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