'WITHDRAW STATE AWARD GIVEN TO HOLOCAUST DENIER'

JPost.com Staff, THE JERUSALEM POST

 
Jul. 19, 2007
 
The Simon Wiesenthal Centre has urged Denmark's Prime Minister, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, to void a monetary award by the Arts Council at the Danish Ministry of Culture to Erik Haaest, known as the "Holocaust Skeptic".
 
Dr. Shimon Samuels, Wiesenthal Centre's Director for International Relations, wrote to Rasmussen that "Haaest  reportedly received this prize for his work on 'The Danish Friekorps  on the Eastern Front, 1941-1965', hardly a symbol of Danish national pride", adding that "Haaest's citations from Holocaust denial literature go back to the 1959 volume of the Journal of Historical Review published by the institute of the same name, frequented by neo-Nazis worldwide."

Another publication reports Haaest as declaring Anne Frank's diary "a swindle".
 
"Your government's award to Haaest (...)legitimizes (...) Holocaust denial, incitement to antisemitism and is an offence to Holocaust survivors and to the families of all victims of Nazism.
 
"Silence would only be construed by hate mongers as a seal of approval", Dr. Samuels concluded.