German Court’s Praise of Right-winger Elicits Strong International Reaction

The government of Chancellor Helmut Kohl, along with Jewish leaders here and abroad, has issued a sharp condemnation of a German court for its lenient verdict against an extremist right-wing leader who claimed that the Holocaust never took place.

In June, a state court in the southwestern German city of Mannheim found Gunter Deckert, chairman of the right-wing National Democratic Party, guilty on charges of inciting racial hatred and sentenced him to a one-year suspended sentence.

This week, the court explained that the lenient sentence had been handed down because Deckert was a family man with no previous criminal record.

The court also praised the defendant as a “highly intelligent person” of “strong character.”

Charges had initially been brought against Deckert after he served as translator at a rally in 1991 for Fred Leuchter, an American Holocaust denier.

In addition to translating comments made by Leuchter, Deckert had said that he supported Leuchter’s theories, including statements that the Holocaust never took place. Publicly expressing Holocaust-denial views is a crime under German law.

Deckert had already been convicted and given a one-year suspended sentence on the charge on Nov. 13, 1992. But both he and the state court appealed the sentence, with Deckert wanting the case dropped entirely and the state prosecutor seeking a tougher sentence.

In March of this year, the Federal Court of Justice, Germany’s highest appeals court, reversed the lower court’s decision, saying that simply repeating another person’s Holocaust denial was not in itself a punishable offense.

It then sent the case back to the Mannheim court to determine whether Deckert subscribed to Nazi ideology, which is a punishable offense.

This week, the Mannheim court issued an explanation of its June ruling, saying, “The defendant, who belongs to the political right, is not an anti-Semite in the sense of (subscribing to the ideology of) the Nazis, who denied the Jews their right to live.”

The court also described Deckert as a dedicated nationalist who resented the moral and financial demands Jews have made on Germany in the wake of the Holocaust.

“On the basis of his national attitude, he criticizes the Jews for their continuous insistence on the Holocaust, and consequently for their financial, political and moral demands, although 50 years have passed since the war.”

The ruling triggered a chain of angry reactions. Norbert Schaefer, a spokesman for Kohl, said Wednesday that the government regretted “the bad signals stemming from the verdict,” adding that the government “has never left any doubt about its determination to fight right-wing extremism.”

Justice Minister Sabine Leutheuser-Schnarrenberger described the ruling as “a slap in the face of all Holocaust victims.”

It was an alarming sign, she said, that a German court had described the Holocaust denial as a “matter of the heart.”

Ignatz Bubis, chairman of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, demanded a strong reaction by the federal government.

Michel Friedman, a senior member of the council, said the ruling amounted to a “recipe for neo-Nazis on how to avoid incrimination.”

In a statement issued in New York, the World Jewish Congress said the court’s decision “constitutes a judicial assault on the Jewish people and an incitement to racial hatred.

“It is incumbent upon the Government of Germany to denounce this grotesque decision, and we call upon the Federal Court of Justice to overrule the Mannheim court and transform the suspended term to a jail sentence,” the statement read.

The Anti-Defamation League and the Simon Wiesenthal Center also condemned the court’s ruling.