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Sylvia Stolz | |
|---|---|
 Sylvia Stolz in 2013 | |
| Born | 16 August 1963 |
| Nationality | German |
| Occupation | Lawyer |
| Criminal charge | Holocaust denial |
| Penalty | Five years imprisonment |
Sylvia Stolz (born 16 August 1963) is a German Neo-Nazi, convicted Holocaust denier and former lawyer. Denial of the Holocaust is a criminal offense in Germany. [1]
Stolz was a member of the defense team of Holocaust denier Ernst Zündel, who was tried in March 2006 for distributing antisemitic literature, including Holocaust denial material, via a website. [2] Stolz disrupted Zündel's initial trial and was barred from the courtroom because of her behavior. She had said the judges deserved the death penalty for "offering succour to the enemy" and had signed a legal document "Heil Hitler". [1] [3] In her view, Germany has been under a "foreign occupation which has portrayed Adolf Hitler as a devil for 60 years, but that is not true." [4] After ignoring the bar, Stolz had to be physically removed from the court. [2] During the March 2006 trial she called the Holocaust "the biggest lie in world history". [3] She also defended Holocaust denier Horst Mahler. [5]
Zündel was eventually convicted in February 2007, and served a five-year term of imprisonment. Stolz was convicted in January 2008 of the same, and additional offenses, and sentenced to a 3½-year prison term. She was also banned from practicing law for five years. [3] [6]
As of May 2009, Stolz was the partner of the German Nazi, Horst Mahler. [7]
Stolz was released from Aichach Prison on 13 April 2011.
In 2012, she was invited by Ivo Sasek, the founder of the Anti-Zensur-Koalition (AZK) (Anti-Censorship Coalition), [8] as a guest speaker at the AZK's 8th conference held at Chur, Graubünden, Switzerland, where she spoke on 24 November 2012. In January 2013, Daniel Kettiger, a Bernese lawyer, filed a criminal complaint with the Graubünden Prosecutor's Office against both Stolz and Sasek. He accused Stolz of violating Swiss race law, Art. 261bis of the Swiss Criminal Code, [9] in that she stated that the Holocaust has never been proved by a court of law, that findings on the location of the crime, method of murder, number killed, time period of crime, perpetrators, bodies or evidence of murder are lacking as is finding as fact that there was Nazi intention to kill Jews. Sasek was accused of failing to act as a responsible moderator. [10] [11]
On 25 February 2015, Stolz was sentenced to 20 months' imprisonment by a court in Munich for the speech she delivered in 2012. [12] On 15 February 2018, the sentence was reduced to 18 months, time served to be reckoned from 23 May 2019, the date of arrest.
Holocaust denial is an antisemitic conspiracy theory that asserts that the Nazi genocide of Jews, known as the Holocaust, is a myth, fabrication, or exaggeration. Holocaust denial involves making one or more of the following false claims:
David John Cawdell Irving is an English author and Holocaust denier who has written on the military and political history of World War II, with a focus on Nazi Germany. His works include The Destruction of Dresden (1963), Hitler's War (1977), Churchill's War (1987) and Goebbels: Mastermind of the Third Reich (1996). In his works, he argued that Adolf Hitler did not know of the extermination of Jews, or, if he did, he opposed it. Though Irving's negationist claims and views of German war crimes in World War II were never taken seriously by mainstream historians, he was once recognised for his knowledge of Nazi Germany and his ability to unearth new historical documents.
Ernst Christof Friedrich Zündel was a German neo-Nazi publisher and pamphleteer of Holocaust denial literature. He was jailed several times: in Canada for publishing literature "likely to incite hatred against an identifiable group", and on charges of being a threat to national security; in the United States, for overstaying his visa; and in Germany for charges of "inciting racial hatred". He lived in Canada from 1958 to 2000.
The Nizkor Project is an Internet-based project run by B'nai Brith Canada which is dedicated to countering Holocaust denial.
The Adelaide Institute was a Holocaust denial group in Australia and is considered to be antisemitic by the Australian Human Rights Commission and others. The Adelaide Institute was formed in 1995 from the former Truth Mission that was established in 1994 by Fredrick Töben, later a convicted Holocaust denier. Töben directed the Institute until his incarceration in 2009 in South Australia for contempt of court. Peter Hartung assumed the role of director of the Adelaide Institute. On assuming the role from Töben, Hartung defied the Federal Court by publishing the revisionist material that led to Töben's three months jail time. In June 2009, the Adelaide Institute was linked with an American white supremacist, James von Brunn, charged with killing a security guard in Washington's Holocaust Museum.
Barbara Kulaszka was a Canadian lawyer who practised law in Brighton, Ontario, known for her work with far-right causes, defending alleged Nazi war criminals and Holocaust deniers, and free speech cases.
Did Six Million Really Die? The Truth at Last is a neo-Nazi, Holocaust denial pamphlet allegedly written by British National Front (NF) member Richard Verrall under the pseudonym Richard E. Harwood and published in 1974 by neo-Nazi propagandist Ernst Zündel, another Holocaust denier and pamphleteer. The NF denied that Verrall was the author in a 1978 edition of World in Action.
Germar Rudolf, also known as Germar Scheerer, is a German chemist and a convicted Holocaust denier.
Volksverhetzung, in English "incitement to hatred", "incitement of popular hatred", "incitement of the masses", or "instigation of the people", is a concept in German criminal law that refers to incitement to hatred against segments of the population and refers to calls for violent or arbitrary measures against them, including assaults against the human dignity of others by insulting, maliciously maligning, or defaming segments of the population.
Frank Rennicke is a German songwriter and ballad singer from Braunschweig in Lower Saxony. He is one of the key figures within the far-right scene in Germany, and describes himself as a "national bard".
Gerd Honsik was an Austrian writer and lyric poet, and a prominent neo-Nazi and Holocaust denier.
Thies Christophersen, a farmer by upbringing, was a prominent German Holocaust denier.
Sixteen European countries, along with Canada and Israel, have laws against Holocaust denial, the denial of the systematic genocidal killing of approximately six million Jews in Europe by Nazi Germany in the 1930s and 1940s. Many countries also have broader laws that criminalize genocide denial. Among the countries that ban Holocaust denial, Austria, Germany, Hungary, Poland and Romania also ban other elements associated with Nazism, such as the display of Nazi symbols.
Horst Mahler is a German former lawyer and political activist. He once was a far-left militant and a founding member of the Red Army Faction who later became a Maoist, before switching to neo-Nazism. Between 2000 and 2003, he was a member of the far-right National Democratic Party of Germany. Since 2003, he has repeatedly been convicted of Volksverhetzung and Holocaust denial, and he served much of a twelve-year prison sentence.
In 2005, the British author and Holocaust denier David Irving was arrested for Holocaust denial in Austria. In early 2006, he was convicted and given a sentence of three years, of which he served 13 months after a reduction of his prison sentence.
Bela Ewald Althans is a German former neo-Nazi. Once the leading organiser in Germany's neo-Nazi underground, Althans left the movement following his imprisonment in the 1990s, and is no longer involved in politics.
Ingrid A. Rimland, also known as Ingrid Zündel, was an American writer and Holocaust denier. She wrote several novels based upon her own experiences growing up in a Mennonite community in Ukraine and as a refugee child during World War II. Her novel The Wanderers (1977), which won her the California Literature Medal Award for best fiction, tells the story of the plight of Mennonite women caught in the social upheavals of revolution and war. In the 1990s, she became a prominent collaborator of Neo-Nazi and Holocaust denier Ernst Zündel, whom she married in 2001. Rimland died on October 12, 2017.
Vincent Reynouard is a French Holocaust denier and proponent of neo-Nazism. He has been convicted and jailed in France under the Gayssot Act, which bars Holocaust denial.
Ursula Hedwig Meta Haverbeck-Wetzel is a German activist from Vlotho. Since 2004, she has also been the subject of lawsuits and convicted due to her Holocaust denial, which in Germany is a criminal offense.
Ivo Sasek is a Swiss-German lay preacher, author of religious writings and leader of the religious sect Organic Christ Generation (OCG), which he founded in 1999. This organization, classified as a cult, has between two and three thousand members. In 2008, Sasek founded the "Anti-Censorship Coalition" (AZK), a forum for right-wing esotericism, conspiracy theories, antisemitism, xenophobia and historical revisionism, including Holocaust denial. From Sasek's Panorama Center in Walzenhausen, Switzerland, these organizations and their numerous media outlets are run, including the neo-Right online channel Klagemauer.tv. Sasek rejects an open, democratic and pluralistic society.
Das verhängte Berufsverbot hielt der BGH jedoch für berechtigt, und dabei bleibt es: Fünf Jahre lang darf die Lebensgefährtin des Rechtsextremisten Horst Mahler ihren Anwaltsberuf nicht ausüben.
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