Holocaust Denier Sentenced To Visit Concentration Camps
Outrage: Belgian lawmaker Laurent Louis performed an anti-Semitic gesture in Parliament ? and blamed Zionists for the Holocaust.
By Aiden Pink September 24, 2017
A former member of parliament in Belgium who was convicted of Holocaust denial has been ordered to visit concentration camps and write about his experiences as part of his punishment.
Laurent Louis, who has been expelled from numerous political parties, was also fined $20,000 for his comments questioning the number of Jews killed in gas chambers during the Holocaust.
“All that is left for me to do is to go and report in the death camps,” Laurent wrote in a statement after the verdict. “No doubt, the Court has recognized my talents as a writer.”
He also said that his punishment would be an opportunity to “denounce current genocides”—which, The New York Times noted, is similar to language that he has used to denounce Israel’s actions in the Gaza Strip.
Deborah Lipstadt, the Emory University professor and prominent historian of the Holocaust, told the Times that she was worried Louis would make a mockery of his sentence.
“When he said, ‘The court has recognized my talents as a writer?’ Give me a break,” she said. “Can he write, ‘Well, I went and I didn’t see anybody being killed’ or, ‘These gas chambers were incapable of killing someone?’”
Contact Aiden Pink at [email protected] or on Twitter, @aidenpink.
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning journalism this Passover.
In this age of misinformation, our work is needed like never before. We report on the news that matters most to American Jews, driven by truth, not ideology.
At a time when newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall. That means for the first time in our 126-year history, Forward journalism is free to everyone, everywhere. With an ongoing war, rising antisemitism, and a flood of disinformation that may affect the upcoming election, we believe that free and open access to Jewish journalism is imperative.
Readers like you make it all possible. Right now, we’re in the middle of our Passover Pledge Drive and we still need 300 people to step up and make a gift to sustain our trustworthy, independent journalism.
Make a gift of any size and become a Forward member today. You’ll support our mission to tell the American Jewish story fully and fairly.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
Only 300 more gifts needed by April 30
