Irving Pleads Guilty to Holocaust Denial

The British revisionist historian and Nazi apologist David Irving today pleaded guilty to charges of denying the Holocaust in 1989 but claimed his views had changed since then.

As his trial on Holocaust-denial charges opened in Vienna, Irving told the court he no longer questioned the fact that millions of Jews died in the Second World War.

The 68-year-old faces up to 10 years in prison for two speeches he made on a visit to Austria in 1989, which included a call for an end to the "gas chambers fairytale". The speeches claimed Adolf Hitler had helped Europe’s Jews and that the Holocaust was a myth.

Last week Irving said Austria’s laws meant he had no choice but to plead guilty to the charges. His lawyer, Elmar Kresbach, said there had clearly been a violation of article three of a law that criminalizes publicly diminishing, denying or justifying the Holocaust.

But Irving’s defense will argue in mitigation, to an eight-member jury and panel of three judges, that the emergence of new documents had made him revise his views since 1989.

This morning, outside court, Irving told reporters: "History is a constantly growing tree - the more you know, the more documents become available, the more you learn, and I have learned a lot since 1989. Yes, there were gas chambers. Millions of Jews died, there is no question. I don’t know the figures. I’m not an expert on the Holocaust."

Irving said he considered it "ridiculous" that he was standing trial for remarks made 17 years ago. Handcuffed and wearing a navy blue suit, he arrived at the court carrying a copy of one of his most controversial books, Hitler’s War, which challenges the extent of the Holocaust.

Shortly later in court, speaking in German, he said: "I made a mistake when I said there were no gas chambers at Auschwitz."

He said, however, that he had never written a book specifically about the Holocaust, which he called "just a fragment of my area of interest". "In no way did I deny the killings of millions of people by the Nazis," Irving claimed.

The controversial historian has been in custody since he was arrested in November while driving in southern Austria, despite being barred from the country. He had been on his way to address an extreme-right student fraternity in Vienna.

Austria has the stiffest Holocaust denial legislation in the world, with laws dating from the late 1940s. The state attorney’s office said Irving’s 1989 remarks were "a dangerous violation of freedom of speech".

The trial has been transferred to Vienna’s biggest courtroom to accommodate the international interest in the case, which has triggered a debate about historical truth and free speech.

Anti-terrorist police were stationed around the court and the gallery has been sealed off to protect the judges.

In 2000, Irving sued the American Holocaust scholar Deborah Lipstadt for libel at the British high court and lost. The presiding judge in that case, Charles Gray, wrote that Irving was "an active Holocaust denier ... anti-Semitic and racist".

In recent months, he is said to have been writing his memoirs, under the working title Irving’s War, while in prison awaiting trial. His lawyer said last month Irving was getting up to 300 fan letters a week from supporters around the world.

Irving, who is the author of nearly 30 books, has contended that most of the people who died at concentration camps such as Auschwitz succumbed to diseases such as typhus rather than being murdered.