NEW YORK (JTA) — A Jewish group asked authorities in Jackson, Miss., not to host Holocaust denier David Irving.
The American Gathering of Jewish Holocaust Survivors and Their Descendants on Tuesday asked Mayor Harvey Johnson to bar the controversial British historian from speaking at town hall on Oct. 21.
“We are shocked and dismayed that a convicted purveyor of hatred could be given such a public platform,” Elan Steinberg, vice president of the Jewish group, wrote in a letter to Johnson.
White separatists including lawyer Richard Barret, the founder of the Nationalist movement, invited Irving to Jackson as part of a book signing tour, according to the Jackson Free Press.
Irving has publicly denied the existence of gas chambers at the Nazi death camp Auschwitz.
In 2004, during a visit to Austria, Irving was arrested and tried by authorities for Holocaust denial. An Austrian judge found him guilty and sentenced Irving to three years in prison. He was released after 11 months and barred from ever returning to Austria.
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