British Home Secretary Kenneth Baker has banned Holocaust revisionist Fred Leuchter from entering the country.
The surprise move follows months of campaigning by community leaders, senior politicians and Jewish students to ban entry by Leuchter, an American who authored a pseudoscientific report that claims there were no gas chambers in the Nazi death camps.
Fears had been growing that the planned visit by Leuchter was aimed at preparing ground for the creation of a center for Holocaust revisionism in Britain.
Leuchter had been invited by right-wing revisionist historian David Irving to address at least two public meetings, one in London and another in the Midlands area of England.
Irving is a former mainstream historian of World War II who was converted to revisionism by Leuchter and published “The Leuchter Report” in Britain.
In 1989, Irving’s company, Focal Point Publications, published a British edition of “The Leuchter Report,” which has since become a standard text for people who claim the Holocaust was a hoax.
Irving and his book were denounced by the House of Commons in June 1989.
Irving had invited Leuchter to Britain as an engineer specializing in the design and construction of death chambers and other execution paraphernalia.
VIOLATED CONSENT DECREE
In June, Leuchter made an official statement admitting he had been practicing, without a license, his self-declared specialization in methods of capital punishment.
He also agreed that he would stop issuing and distributing reports denying the existence of the gas chambers.
Leuchter had been scheduled to go on trial on June 24 in Malden, Mass., for practicing engineering without a license.
His statement, submitted to the Massachusetts Board of Registration of Professional Engineers and Land Surveyors, was made as part of a deal with the state, which mandated that he be placed on pretrial probation for two years.
The director of the Albany, N.Y., group that instigated court proceedings against Leuchter says the revisionist has already violated his consent agreement by agreeing to continue distributing his report.
“They are offering his report in this conference for 5 pounds each,” said Shelly Shapiro, director of Holocaust Survivors and Friends in Pursuit of Justice.
Shapiro said she was called by the Canadian Attorney General’s Office with information that Canadian Holocaust revisionist Ernst Zundel has applied to resume his publishing business, starting with “The Leuchter Report.”
(JTA staff writer Susan Birnbaum in New York contributed to this report.)
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
