Jewish Paper Slams Belgian Daily’s Interview With Holocaust Denier
Image by Getty Images
Jewish Newspaper Slams Belgian Daily’s Interview With Holocaust Denier
Complains over Holocaust denier interview in daily
January 19, 2016 8:26am ANTWERP (JTA) — A Belgian Jewish newspaper complained to the country’s watchdog on journalism about a daily that published a Holocaust denier’s claim that no one died in Nazi gas chambers.
The Antwerp-based Joods Actueel monthly filed the complaint against the De Morgen daily last week, the monthly’s editor-in-chief, Michael Freilich, told JTA Monday.
In its complaint against De Morgen, Joods Actueel cited legislation from 1995 that forbids claiming the Holocaust did not happen – a law which Freilich claims was broken both by De Morgen and by the newpaper’s interviewee, Siegfried Verbeke.
In an interview published earlier this month, Verbeke, a far-right symathizer with multiple convictions for inciting racial hate against Jews and denying the genocide, said: “Of course gas chambers existed, hundreds of them. To disinfect the clothes of people who went through them. But gas chambers designed to kill people never existed, no.”
The Belgian state’s authority for combatting discrimination, ICGK, said it was looking into legal action against Verbeke over this statement and Antwerp Mayor Bart De Wever expressed support for his prosecution. But “De Morgen is for all intents and purposes an accomplice in this offense, and should answer for its actions,” Freilich said.
He and the management at Joods Actueel complained to the Belgian Council for Journalism over what they described as a “violation of ethics” regardless of whether De Morgen is charged with breaking the law.
“Even in the United States, where freedom of expression is greater than in Europe, a major paper, like, say, The Washington Post, would not consider interviewing David Duke,” Freilich said of that American Holocaust denier.
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.
Now more than ever, American Jews need independent news they can trust, with reporting driven by truth, not ideology. We serve you, not any ideological agenda.
At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and the protests on college campuses.
Readers like you make it all possible. Support our work by becoming a Forward Member and connect with our journalism and your community.
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.
