One sentence served out, another sentence reduced. Five years since being charged by the German courts with 14 counts of inciting racial hatred, convicted Holocaust denier Ernst Zündel was released early March from Mannheim Prison.  Some 600 kilometers away in Vienna, fellow Neonazi publisher Gerd Honsik, famous for works such as Freispruch für Hitler? (“Acquittal for Hitler?”) saw his five-year sentence reduced to four. 

Released amid applause and flowers from a handful of supporters waiting outside the prison, Zündel declined to give any statements pertaining to his position on the Holocaust. The author of such works as The Hitler We Loved and Why preferred to say this time, “it’s kind of a sad situation; there’s a lot to say. I’ll certainly be careful not to offend anyone and their draconian laws.” The 70-year-old expressed no other plans other than to retire to his home region of the Black Forest.  Over in Austria, the Appeals Senate of Vienna’s Higher Regional Court justified the reduction of Honsik’s sentence, calling the original five years too long. Judge Christian Dostal strongly discouraged the formerly active Nazi propagandist from the further public expression of his sentiments, saying “you have occupied yourself with this activity your entire life. I do not know if that has improved the quality of your life, but it would please me not to see you here again. Keep a diary that you do not show to anyone else”.

Far-reaching activities

Aside from their chosen positions and activities with regard to Nazism and the Holocaust, Zündel and Honsik had a wide international audience and operated outside their home bases over long periods of time. Zündel founded the publishing outfit Samsidat Publishers in Canada, where he spent forty years after emigration from Germany in 1958. Aside from his own works, Zündel’s Samsidat published Richard Verrall's Did Six Million Really Die?, and distributed Nazi and neo-Nazi posters, audiotapes, and memorabilia, as well as pamphlets and books devoted to Holocaust denial and Allied and Zionist "war crimes", all on a worldwide scale.  Zündel was deported back to Germany in March 2005 and immediately arrested upon his arrival, charged with and eventually convicted of incitement of the masses. Canadian authorities have reacted to the end of his prison term by reiterating the continuing validity of the ban on his re-entry, citing dangers to the security of their country

Last Stop: Spain

Honsik had fled to Spain in 1992, after having been found guilty in Austria of spreading Nazi ideology in Freispruch für Hitler.  From there he continued to write extensively from his extreme right-wing perspective over the next fifteen years, producing the journal Halt! (“Stop!”) as well as various other Nazi-sympathetic books and online articles, the contents of which were often Anti-Semitic in nature, denied the existence of the gas chambers, or the occurrence of the Holocaust itself. He was arrested in 2007 near Malaga, Spain on an international warrant and extradited back to Austria. His recently-reduced 5-year sentence was handed down on April 27, 2009.

By Janelle Dumalaon