Don’t host Holocaust denier David Irving, Dutch group appeals to event halls

AMSTERDAM — A Dutch watchdog group on anti-Semitism called on owners of event halls not to host Holocaust denier David Irving, who reportedly is planning a lecture in The Hague.

Irving, who has been barred from several countries and was jailed in 2006 in Austria for denying or minimizing the Jewish genocide, is scheduled to speak somewhere in The Hague on Feb. 25, the Center for Information and Documentation on Israel, or CIDI, wrote in a Feb. 20 statement.

It called on “all owners of event halls in The Hague to offer no platform to the convict” from Britain.

The topic of the lecture that Irving plans to deliver is “Hitler, Himmler, and the Homosexuals,” according to CIDI.

The intended date, Feb. 25, is the 75th anniversary of the February Strike — the day in 1941 when the Dutch resistance organized a series of protests over the anti-Semitic measures implemented by the German occupation and its collaborators.

Hague Mayor Jozias van Aartsen said he would intervene to ban a lecture by Irving, according to CIDI.

In 2011, CIDI brought about the cancellation of a planned lecture by Irving at Amsterdam University College. The city’s mayor forbade the gathering, leading to its cancellation.