Process - "Unteachable": Prison sentence for 95-year-old Holocaust denier
Again and again, she denied that massive killings of people took place in Auschwitz: The Regional Court of Hamburg sentenced the 95-year-old Ursula Haverbeck to a total sentence of one year and four months in prison on a Wednesday for incitement. "She deliberately lied," said the presiding judge in the appeal proceedings against the defendant. "She knew that what she said was being spread." The judgment is not yet legally binding.
In the total sentence, according to the Hamburg Regional Court, there is a judgment from Berlin from 2022 in another case. At that time, Haverbeck was sentenced to one year in prison, but she has not yet served this sentence. Four months of the sentence passed in Hamburg are also considered to have already been served due to lengthy procedural delays. According to the judgments in Berlin and Hamburg, Haverbeck should therefore continue to spend a total of one year in prison.
The public prosecutor had accused the woman of incitement in two cases. The resident of North Rhine-Westphalia Haverbeck had told journalists on the sidelines of the Lüneburg trial against the former SS man Oskar Gröning on April 21, 2015, that Auschwitz was not a extermination, but a labor camp. In a TV interview with the NDR magazine "Panorama," she also denied that there was a mass extermination of people there. Historians estimate that the Nazis killed at least 1.1 million people in Auschwitz-Birkenau alone.
Haverbeck was sentenced to ten months in prison without probation by the Amtsgericht in Hamburg in 2015. She appealed the verdict. However, the trial in Hamburg did not take place until nine years later.
"She is unteachable," the prosecutor said in her plea for the woman. The prosecution had demanded a slightly higher sentence of one year and six months. The defense argued for acquittal. It was not proven that her client wanted the interviews to be made public, one of her arguments was.
During the fully occupied audience chamber, supporters of the defendant disrupted the trial despite all warnings several times with loud interruptions. They applauded loudly as the defendant repeated some of her theses in a very long, so-called final statement. When some supporters left the room as a sign of protest, the presiding judge called out to them: "Leave, I don't need such spectators."
For years, criminal courts have had to deal with statements from notorious Holocaust denier Haverbeck. She was first convicted in 2004 and received a fine. She served more than two years in prison for Holocaust denial.
- The Hamburg District Court referenced a previous judgment from Berlin in 2022, where Haverbeck was also sentenced to a year in prison for incitement related to the denial of Holocaust mass killings.
- Haverbeck's incitement to hatred stems from her claims that Auschwitz was not an extermination camp but a labor camp, which she made to journalists and in a TV interview.
- The sentences in Berlin and Hamburg total about one year and four months in prison for Haverbeck, with four months already served due to procedural delays.
- National Socialism's dark history continues to resonate in the German court system, as Ursula Haverbeck, a former resident of North Rhine-Westphalia, stands trial for her denial of the atrocities committed at Auschwitz.
- The woman's stubbornness and unwillingness to learn were highlighted by the prosecutor, who accused Haverbeck of deliberately spreading false information and disregarding historical facts.
- Supporters of Haverbeck frequently disrupted the Hamburg trial, causing loud interruptions despite warnings, indicating that the legacy of extremism in Germany still grapples with its past.
- Haverbeck's history of Holocaust denial dates back to 2004, where she was first convicted and received a fine before serving over two years in prison.
