Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
The Schmooze

British Holocaust Denier To Lead Tour of Nazi Sites

Controversial British Holocaust denier and “historian” David Irving (to call him a historian, sans quotations, seems a tad irresponsible) will lead a group of British and American tourists on an “unforgettable journey” next week to Nazi sites in Germany and Poland.

Needless to say, Irving’s trip hasn’t gone over well.

“For Holocaust survivors, the planned visit by David Irving to the sites of the Treblinka death camp and the Warsaw Ghetto is a deliberate act of hate and contempt by this notorious racist,” Elan Steinberg, vice president of the American Gathering of Holocaust Survivors and their Descendants, told JTA. “His tour is an insult to all victims of Nazi brutality, Jew and non-Jew.”

The trip, which costs $2,650 a head, also includes stops at Hitler’s headquarters at Ketrzyn, Himmler’s headquarters and Auschwitz. The tour is fully booked, according to Irving.

Auschwitz, in particular, has elicited strong words from Irving in recent days. Irving told a British newspaper that Polish authorities have turned the camp into a “Disney-style … money-making machine.” Irving accused the site’s curators of going so far as to construct phony watchtowers.

“Forget the phony allures, mass-tourism and ‘reconstructions’ modern-day Auschwitz — the erstwhile slave-labour camp turned into a tourist attraction, complete with hot-dog vendors and souvenir stands,” he wrote on his website, Focal Point Publications.

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.

If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.

Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism. 

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.