Last update - 13:32 20/02/2006 Irving: I Erred When I Said There Were No Gas Chambers At Auschwitz
By Amiram Barket, Haaretz Correspondent and AP
VIENNA, Austria - Right-wing British historian David Irving pleaded guilty to criminal charges of denying the Holocaust and conceded he erred in contending there were no Nazi gas chambers at Auschwitz as his trial opened Monday in Vienna.
Irving, 67, told reporters he now acknowledges that the Nazis systematically slaughtered Jews during World War II. "History is like a constantly changing tree," he said as an eight-member jury and a panel of three judges prepared to hear charges that could put him behind bars for up to 10 years.
Irving, handcuffed and wearing a navy blue suit, arrived at the court carrying a copy of one of his most controversial books - "Hitler's War," which challenges the extent of the Holocaust.
"I made a mistake when I said there were no gas chambers at Auschwitz," Irving told the court, speaking in German. But he insisted he never wrote a book about the Holocaust, which he called "just a fragment of my area of interest."
"In no way did I deny the killings of millions of people by the Nazis," Irving testified. Earlier, he told journalists he considered it "ridiculous" that he was standing trial for remarks made 17 years ago.
He has been in custody since his arrest in November on charges stemming from two speeches he gave in Austria in 1989 in which he was accused of denying the Nazis' extermination of 6 million Jews. The state attorney's office said the 1989 remarks were "a dangerous violation of freedom of speech."
A verdict was expected later Monday, with a conviction almost certain because of Irving's guilty plea.
In interviews with the British media ahead of the trial, Irving and his Austrian lawyer said they did not believe they would win the case. The lawyer, Elmar Kresbach, has claimed recently that Irving had changed his views back in 1992 after he uncovered a radio transmission containing a message to Adolf Eichmann about the extermination of a million Jews at the Treblinka death camp.
Experts cast doubt on the sincerity of these claims. Prof. Dina Porat, head of Tel Aviv University's Institute for the Study of Contemporary Anti-Semitism and Racism, told Haaretz Sunday that Irving's purported repentence is motivated by his fear of a verdict that could amount to 10 years' imprisonment.
"It is not possible that Irving changed his mind in 1992 without saying anything about it in the course of the libel trial he initiated in 2000," Porat said.
Irving's trial comes amid new - and fierce - debate over freedom of expression in Europe, where the printing and reprinting of unflattering cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad has triggered violent protests worldwide.
Irving had tried to win his provisional release on $24,000 bail, but a Vienna court refused, saying it considered him a flight risk.
His lawyer, Elmar Kresbach, said last month the controversial Third Reich historian was getting up to 300 pieces of fan mail a week from supporters around the world, and that while in detention he was writing his memoirs under the working title "Irving's War."
Irving was arrested November 11 in the southern Austrian province of Styria on a warrant issued in 1989. He was charged under a federal law that makes it a crime to publicly diminish, deny or justify the Holocaust.
Within two weeks of his arrest, Irving asserted through his lawyer that he had come to acknowledge the existence of Nazi-era gas chambers.
In the past, however, he has claimed that Adolf Hitler knew little if anything about the Holocaust, and has been quoted as saying there was "not one shred of evidence" the Nazis carried out their "Final Solution" to exterminate the Jewish population on such a massive scale.
Vienna's national court, where the trial is being held, ordered the balcony gallery closed to prevent projectiles from being thrown down at the bench, the newspaper Die Presse reported Sunday.
It quoted officials as saying they were bracing for Irving's supporters to give him the Nazi salute or shout out pro-Hitler slogans during the trial, which will continue into Tuesday if a verdict is not reached on Monday.
Irving is the author of nearly 30 books, and has contended most of those who died at concentration camps such as Auschwitz succumbed to diseases such as typhus rather than execution.
In 2000, Irving sued American Holocaust scholar Deborah Lipstadt for libel in a British court, but lost. The presiding judge in that case, Charles Gray, wrote that Irving was "an active Holocaust denier ... anti-Semitic and racist."
Irving has had numerous run-ins with the law over the years.
In 1992, a judge in Germany fined him the equivalent of $6,000 for publicly insisting the Nazi gas chambers at Auschwitz were a hoax.