Yahoo! News
February 27, 2009
http://ca.news.yahoo.com/s/afp/090227/world/germany_britain_vatican_jews
BERLIN (AFP) - Leading German religious groups have sharply rejected the apology of a British Holocaust-denying bishop, with a prominent Jewish organisation accusing him of continuing to hold his controversial views.
In this "throughly bungled" statement, Bishop Richard Williamson "unfortunately takes nothing back," Dieter Graumann, vice-president of the Central Council for Jews in Germany told the Handelsblatt newspaper.
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| Roman Catholic bishop Richard Williamson, seen here on February 25, 2009. An apology from Holocaust-denying bishop Williamson failed to placate the Vatican which called on him to 'unequivocally and publicly' withdraw his comments. Photo by Leon Neal |
The apology, made public on Thursday, "leads one to the conclusion that he still believes in the Holocaust-denial," he said.
The vice president of the Central Council of German Catholics, Hans Joachim Meyer, also rejected Williamson's "mea culpa," telling the Tagesspiegel on Friday it was "in no way satisfactory."
In a letter to the Vatican released Thursday, Williamson apologised to those he offended with his remarks but stopped short of withdrawing the remarks.
"Observing these consequences I can truthfully say that I regret having made such remarks," said Williamson in the letter made public a day after his return to Britain from Argentina.
"If I had known beforehand the full harm and hurt to which they would give rise, especially to the Church, but also to survivors and relatives of victims of injustice under the Third Reich, I would not have made them," he said.
The bishop has been at the centre of a raging controversy after saying on Swedish television last month: "There was not one Jew killed by the gas chambers. It was all lies, lies, lies."
Williamson said he believed "200,000 to 300,000 Jews perished in Nazi concentration camps, but none of them by gas chambers."
The comments prompted Germany's Chancellor Angela Merkel to launch a highly unusual attack on the Vatican, calling on the pope to clarify his stance on Holocaust-denial, which is illegal in Germany.
Pope Benedict XVI later said that "any denial or minimisation of (the Shoah), this terrible crime, is intolerable and altogether unacceptable."
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