Elad Benari,(A7) A Berlin court on Friday sentenced a 93-year-old German woman to 12 months in prison for denying that Jews were systematically murdered during the Holocaust, The Associated Press reported.
The Berlin regional court rejected an appeal by notorious neo-Nazi Ursula Haverbeck, known as the “Nazi grandma”, against two convictions for Holocaust denial in 2017 and 2020.
The judges ruled that the sentence could not be suspended because Haverbeck had shown no remorse or signs of changing her views during the appeal hearings, according to AP.
Haverbeck has repeatedly asserted that the Auschwitz death camp was just a work camp. She has been convicted several times but long avoided prison due to lengthy appeals. Germany’s highest court threw out her case against the Verden conviction in August of 2018.
She has previously several fines and served at least 30 months for similar crimes. Friday’s ruling can be appealed.
German law makes it illegal to deny the genocide committed by Adolf Hitler’s regime, which in the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp in occupied Poland alone claimed some 1.1 million lives, mostly of European Jews.
Holocaust denial and other forms of incitement to hatred against segments of the population carry up to five years in prison in Germany, while the use of Nazi symbols such as swastikas is also banned.
