home *** CD-ROM | disk | FTP | other *** search
- Path: sparky!uunet!paladin.american.edu!darwin.sura.net!wupost!emory!sol.ctr.columbia.edu!destroyer!cs.ubc.ca!mala.bc.ca!oneb!kmcvay
- Newsgroups: alt.revisionism
- Subject: (CANADA) Irving critics get mail backing expelled author
- Message-ID: <1992Dec23.154625.21353@oneb.almanac.bc.ca>
- From: kmcvay@oneb.almanac.bc.ca (Ken Mcvay)
- Date: Wed, 23 Dec 92 15:46:25 GMT
- Organization: The Old Frog's Almanac
- Keywords: Irving,Victoria,Canada
- Lines: 72
-
- File: irving.victoria
-
- Victoria (B.C. Canada) Times-Colonist
- Dec. 22, 1992 (C1)
-
- Irving critics get mail backing expelled author
-
- By Gerard Young, Times-Colonist staff
-
- `Gutless' write replies to newspaper letters
-
- Supporters of Holocaust revisionist David Irving are still busy, even though
- the British author has been kicked out of Canada.
-
- Some who wrote to local newspapers after his Victoria visit in November have
- received packages of information defending Irving, who says the Holocaust
- was exaggerated.
-
- "All of them [letters] were against Irving because it was opportune to do
- so," said an unsigned cover letter. "Not a single letter was published in
- support of truth in history.
-
- "Your prime aim was to distort rather than to correct. With very few
- exceptions it seems that none of you had read any books by Irving."
-
- Jim Jaarsma, Victoria parks and recreation commission chairman, received a
- package of information defending Irving after he wrote a letter to a
- newspaper.
-
- But he said the sender went to some trouble because his address isn't listed
- in the phone book. However, his address is accessible through public
- records, as he is a former candidate for city council.
-
- Jaarsma, whose grandfather was Jewish, wrote that Irving and others like him
- shouldn't be banned.
-
- "We have an opportunity to expose people like that," he said Monday.
-
- He believes, however, that those who promote hatred through rascism should
- face criminal charges as defined in law.
-
- Jaarsma is concerned that, when Holocaust survivors and witnesses are
- eventually all dead, only artificial records of events will be available and
- historical revisionism will become even more rampant.
-
- By keeping the issue exposed to scrutiny now, memory of the horrors won't
- diminish, he said.
-
- "How could anybody not believe that it happened?" he asked.
-
- Jaarsma also called the sender "gutless" for not signing the cover letter,
- which is filled with spelling mistakes.
-
- Michael Peters, chairman of the Victoria Jewish Community Relations
- Committee, received the same package after writing to the newspaper.
-
- He said the issue is hardly worth discussing and events of the Holocaust are
- easily provien and Irving refuted.
-
- The package deals more with defending Irving's credibility as a historian
- and with condemning his arrest and expulsion than with challenging the
- Holocaust.
-
- Irving, 56, was expelled from Canada in November after a controversial visit
- here. He can't return to Canada unless he has special permission, say
- immigration officials.
-
- --
- The Old Frog's Almanac - Public Access UseNet for Central Vancouver Island
- (604) 245-3205 (v32) (604) 245-4366 (2400x4) SCO XENIX 2.3.2 GT
- Ladysmith, British Columbia, CANADA. Just south of Tupperware Central...
- Information is power - get connected
-