Police Investigate Holocaust-Denying Bishop, CNN, February 4, 2009

Police Investigate Holocaust-Denying Bishop

CNN
February 4, 2009

http://www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/europe/02/04/germany.bishop/

BERLIN, Germany (CNN) — A German district attorney said Wednesday he had launched a criminal investigation against a Roman Catholic bishop who denied the Nazis had intentionally murdered 6 million Jews.

Regensburg District Attorney Guenther Ruckdaeschel said authorities are investigating whether the remarks by Bishop Richard Williamson can be considered "inciting racial hatred." Denying the Holocaust is a crime according to the German criminal code and punishable by up to five years in prison.

In the interview, Bishop Williamson denied the Nazis had used gas chambers at concentration camps.

Ruckdaeschel says he launched the investigation January 23 after learning about an interview Williamson gave to Swedish Public Broadcasting. In the interview, Williamson denied the Nazis had used gas chambers at concentration camps.

"I believe that the historical evidence is strongly against — is hugely against — 6 million Jews having been deliberately gassed in gas chambers as a deliberate policy of Adolf Hitler," Williamson said in the interview, which also appeared on various Web sites after broadcast. "I believe there were no gas chambers."

The remarks have sparked anger and outrage around the world, some of which is aimed at the Vatican and Pope Benedict XVI.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel demanded Tuesday that the pope firmly reject denial of the Holocaust and make clear that there must be positive relations with the Jewish community.

American Jewish leaders have also expressed outrage that Williamson, who was excommunicated in 1988, was welcomed back to the church days after the interview.

Williamson and three other bishops who belong to the ultra-conservative Society of Saint Pius X were excommunicated by Pope John Paul II in 1988. The society was founded by Archbishop Marcel Lefebrve, who rebelled against the Vatican's modernizing reforms in the 1960s, and who consecrated the men in unsanctioned ceremonies.

Vatican spokesman Father Federico Lombardi said the Vatican's decision to accept Williamson was part of its desire to normalize relations with the ultra-conservative group, and had nothing to do with the bishop's personal views.

Ruckdaeschel decided to launch his investigation in Regensburg because the Williamson interview was conducted at a priest seminar of the Society of Saint Pius X, of which Williamson is a member, in the nearby town of Zaitzkofen.

Ruckdaeschel told CNN that a legal representative for Williamson contacted him and said the bishop denies the allegations.

According to the legal representative's account, Williamson had told the Swedish reporters he did not want the interview aired outside Sweden — and therefore, the remarks would not fall under German criminal law.

According to the German criminal code, comments glorifying or denying crimes committed by the Nazis, or National Socialists, are only a crime if they are made publicly.

Ruckdaeschel says he will attempt to question the two Swedish reporters who conducted the interview. He said it was unlikely Williamson will have to appear in court because he is currently in Argentina, but the bishop may be required to submit a written statement in the case.

The pope — who was born in Germany and was a child during the Nazi period — rejected Holocaust denial in public statements on January 28.

After his 14th birthday in 1941, Benedict — then called Joseph Ratzinger — was forced along with the rest of his class in Bavaria, southern Germany, to join the Hitler Youth. However his biographer John Allen Jr., said Ratzinger's family was strongly anti-Nazi.

At the end of his weekly audience that day, the pope discussed his trips to the former concentration camp at Auschwitz and the images of "the heinous slaughter of millions of Jews, the innocent victims of a blind racial and religious hatred."

He said he hopes the memory of the Holocaust "induces humanity to reflect on the unpredictability of evil when it conquers the heart of man. The Shoah (Holocaust) must be for all a warning against oblivion, against denial or reductionism, because the violence done against one human being is violence done against all."

Williamson apologized last week for the "distress" his remarks caused the pope, but did not retract them.