Activists petition Polish police to bar Holocaust denier from country

JTA — A Warsaw-based Holocaust commemoration group petitioned the Polish border police to block entry to the country for a Holocaust denier planning to give tours of Nazi death camps in Poland.

From the Depths filed the petition last week. The group’s founder, Jonny Daniels, said it was the first legal procedure to block the planned tours by British Holocaust denier David Irving of Holocaust-related sites in Poland.

The border police have 30 days to reply to the request regarding Irving’s planned tour, which is scheduled for early September.

Irving, who has been convicted of Holocaust denial in several countries, “intends to spread his controversial views on the territory of the Republic of Poland that violate the good name of the Polish Nation, the historical truth and the memory of millions of victims of German totalitarianism,” Daniels wrote.

Last month, From the Depths also petitioned the public prosecutor’s office in Poland to bar Irving from entering the country. That petition included a dossier of Irving’s numerous attempts to deny various aspects of historical accounts of the Nazi genocide.

The nine-day tour, which costs $3,650, is scheduled to visit Treblinka, Sobibor, Belzec and Majdanek. Publicity for the tour calls the death camps “controversial.”

It also will visit the bunker headquarters of Adolf Hitler known as “The Wolf’s Lair” and the headquarters of SS chief Heinrich Himmler.

Irving is described on the promotional material as a Hitler expert. He led a similar tour in 2013.