British historian David Irving is running concentration camp tours. Photo / Getty Images
British historian David Irving is running concentration camp tours. Photo / Getty Images
The Holocaust-denying historian David Irving has sparked anger by organising £2,000 (NZ$4,830) tours of concentration camps.
The disgraced academic has been accused by Holocaust memorial groups of insulting the memory of those killed in the Second World War by spreading 'pro-Nazi propaganda' on the tours.
Irving, 77, is notorious forhis attempts to play down the extent of the Holocaust, and his insistence that Hitler was unaware of the plan to exterminate the Jews.
He was publicly exposed after his failed bid to sue author Deborah Lipstadt for calling him a Holocaust denier. Next month, Irving is to take a group of "international guests" to Poland, where they will visit four concentration camps at Treblinka, Sobibor, Belzec and Majdanek.
They will also stop at the ruined "Wolf's Lair", the fortress near the town of Ketrzyn built to be Hitler's headquarters on the Eastern Front.
The nine-day tour, costs £1,850 (NZ$4,470) per person, plus an extra £200 (NZ$483) for a two-day stay in Riga, the capital of Latvia. In promotional material, Irving promises customers the opportunity to "make up your own mind about the truth". Karen Pollock, of the Holocaust Educational Trust, said: "David Irving is a proven Holocaust denier. His 'tour' can serve no purpose other than to insult the memory of Holocaust victims and survivors."
Irving told MailOnline that he had already "organised international tours of groups from all over the world to the sites". He added: "This year will be the seventh, I think."
Asked about the criticism, he said: "I urge you not to listen too closely these Schmierfinken [a German word meaning "hacks"]. Have they ever taken the trouble to visit these sites?"
