An Australian judge has ruled that a Holocaust denier must stop distributing anti-Semitic material.
Monday’s decision by Justice Peter Graham Hely regarding Olga Scully is believed to be the first time a conviction has rested on the country’s hate crimes laws.
The Ukrainian-born Scully, 59,who has long disseminated anti-Jewish information, vowed to continue distributing the material.
Some of the pamphlets she distributed claimed that the Holocaust, in which millions of Jews were killed in European concentration camps, was made up. She also accused Jews of controlling pornography.
In a previous court appearance, Scully told Australia’s Federal Court that the Holocaust, the world banking system and the international media were all part of a Jewish conspiracy.
Scully will now be in contempt of court if she continues to distribute offensive material. She would be subject to fines or a jail sentence.
A complaint registered to the court would result in her being charged.
The case against her was brought by Jeremy Jones, president of the Executive Council of Australian Jewry, in a bid to uphold a 2000 ruling made by the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission banning Scully from distributing anti-Semitic material and ordering her to apologize publicly to the Australian Jewish community.
The commission’s ruling was an order to desist her anti-Semitic work, but it carried no punishment if she failed to do so. She continued to distribute her material, which included videos she labeled as Disney shows and left in letter boxes.
For Jones, the decision marked the end of a six-year-long campaign to bring Scully to justice
“We can feel a true sense of satisfaction that justice has been achieved and it reaffirms that Australia is a tolerant society,” he said. “How hard it must have been for those who suffered at the hands of the Nazis and decided to settle as far from Europe as possible only to witness Scully’s work in stirring up memories they were trying to forget.”
Scully has four weeks to appeal.
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.
