FILE - This is a Thursday, Sept. 23, 201 file photo of controversial British historian David Irving as he speaks to the AP in Warsaw, Poland. A Jewish rights group is urging a Polish state historical institute to fire an official who has published several books by the notorious British Holocaust denier David Irving. The Simon Wiesenthal Center, headquartered in the United States, says the official, Arkadiusz Wingert, published books by Irving between 2009 and 2014. (AP Photo/Alik Keplicz/File)
October 03, 2017 - 3:50 AM
WARSAW, Poland - A Jewish rights group is urging a Polish state historical institute to fire an official who has published several books by notorious British Holocaust denier David Irving.
The Simon Wiesenthal Center, headquartered in the United States, says the official, Arkadiusz Wingert, published books by Irving between 2009 and 2014.
Wingert is now the deputy director of the publishing office of the Institute of National Remembrance, a state body that investigates crimes in Poland during World War II and the subsequent communist era.
"If the (institute) is to maintain any shred of credibility it must end its relationship with Wingert immediately and stop all efforts aimed at undermining the history of the Holocaust in Poland," Mark Weitzman, director of government affairs for the Wiesenthal centre, said in a statement late Monday.
The history institute has defended hiring Wingert, arguing that none of the works that Wingert published violated Polish law, which makes Holocaust denial a crime.
It also noted that the Polish editions of Irving's works Wingert had already been published elsewhere first.
Irving is a revisionist historian who has declared that the Auschwitz gas chambers were a hoax.
He has been declared guilty of Holocaust denial by courts in Britain and Austria, where he served a 13-month prison sentence.
News from © The Associated Press, 2017