Holocaust Denier Kicked out of Book Fair
The International Warsaw Book Fair took place this weekend, but sadly not without incident. A fair promoting learning, the exchange of ideas, and combating ignorance, the International Warsaw Book Fair attracted nearly 700 exhibitors from 31 countries. Though the country of Ukraine was to be the special guest of the fair, with more than 100 participants from that country, including publishers, writers and journalists, another guest ended up crashing the party - David Irving.
Irving is a self-taught British historian and Holocaust denier; he's even been convicted and spent more than a year in an Austrian jail for denying the execution of millions of Jews during the Second World War. In a country as affected by such recent tragedy, denying historical events might not legally be a crime (in Polish law Holocaust denial isn't prohibited, but the promotion of fascism is), but will at least lead to banishment from the country's leading book fair. The historian was ordered out of the fair after he attempted to display his own books, as organizers weren't informed about the subject of Irving's work in time to prevent him from setting up a table. Perhaps Irving at least learned one lesson: it's hard to deny the past in a city which still remembers its own Jewish Ghetto.