Holocaust revisionist Toben can appeal

SYDNEY, Australia (JTA) — An Australian court will decide whether a Holocaust revisionist should be jailed for refusing to remove from his Web site material that vilifies Jews and denies the Holocaust.

South Australian Federal Court Justice Anthony Besanko on Tuesday gave Fredrick Toben until June 9 to submit his appeal to the finding of contempt and the accompanying three-month jail sentence.

The German-born founder of the Adelaide Institute, who turned 65 Tuesday, was last month found guilty on 24 counts of contempt by the Federal Court for defying a 2002 court order preventing him from publishing offensive material, including doubting the existence of gas chambers at Auschwitz and alleging that Jews are of "limited intelligence."

Toben’s appeal is scheduled to be heard Aug. 13 before the full bench. Besanko suspended the arrest warrant until that date and ordered Toben not to leave South Australia, except to visit his lawyer in Melbourne.

The long-running case against Toben began in 1996, when Jeremy Jones, a former president of the Executive Council of Australian Jewry, first filed a complaint alleging Toben had published anti-Semitic material on his Web site.

Meanwhile, his successor at the Adelaide Institute, Peter Hartung, is continuing to publish material suggesting “the Holocaust does not exist in reality.”

A current article online continues that “The ‘gas chambers of Auschwitz’ and the ‘extermination of the Jews’ began as wartime propaganda, for the reasons of ‘proving’ to the world how evil the German National Socialist system of government was, and to deflect from the real war crimes of WWII, including the mass firebombing of German cities, whose targets were defenseless women and children.”

Jones’ attorney, Robin Margo, has asked the court to consider taking action against Hartung.