CANADIAN SIBLINGS RECEIVE JAIL TERMS FOR HOLOCAUST DENIAL IN GERMANY
The trial in Germany of two siblings, both Canadian citizens, for denying the Holocaust has ended with jail terms.
According to Anne Wild, a photojournalist who monitored the trial for The CJN, Alfred Schaefer, 63, who lives in Germany, received a prison sentence today of three years and two months. His sister, Monika Schaefer, 59, who lives in Jasper, Alta., received a term of 10 months.
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But since she has been in prison since the charges were laid in January, she was set free, with her time already served.
The siblings were tried together on six counts of “incitement to hatred” for producing and posting at least one video in which Monika Schaefer denied the Holocaust.
The trial began in July in Munich. Monika Schaefer was in Germany visiting her brother at the time and was arrested while attending the trial of another Holocaust denier.
She’s a musician and activist who was born in Canada to German parents and was the federal Green party’s candidate in the Alberta riding of Yellowhead in 2006, 2008 and 2011.
Monika Schaefer gained notoriety in July 2016 after appearing in a five-minute YouTube video, titled Sorry, Mom, I was wrong about the Holocaust, in which she said the Holocaust was the “biggest and most pernicious and persistent lie in all of history.”
In it she claimed that death camps were really work camps where prisoners were kept “as healthy and as well-fed as was possible.”
According to Wild, Monika Schaefer told the court, in German, that, “I’m convinced that the Holocaust is a great untruth of history.” She said she made the video to make peace with her mother and that she wrote the script.
Wild said the trial heard evidence that the video was produced by Alfred Schaefer in the town of Tutzing, outside Munich. Monika told court that she knew it would be published online.
Monika Schaefer was ousted from the Green party over the YouTube video, which the party condemned “in the strongest possible terms.”
In May, Alfred Schaefer was convicted of incitement to hatred for a speech he delivered in the German city of Dresden in February 2017. He was fined 5,000 euros ($7,700).
It was reported that at the start of his trial, Alfred Schaefer delivered the Nazi straight-arm salute in the courtroom.
It was not clear as of Friday whether the verdict or sentences will be appealed