Page "David Irving" Paragraph 55

At the same time, Irving maintained an ambivalent attitude to Holocaust denial depending on his audience.

In a 1993 letter, Irving lashed out against his former friend Zündel, writing that: " In April 1988 I unhesitatingly agreed to aid your defence as a witness in Toronto.

I would not make the same mistake again.

As a penalty for having defended you then, and for having continued to aid you since, my life has come under a gradually mounting attack: I find myself the worldwide victim of mass demonstrations, violence, vituperation and persecution ".

( emphasis in the original ) Irving went on to claim his life had been wonderful until Zündel had gotten him involved in the Holocaust denial movement ; van Pelt argues that Irving was just trying to shift responsibility for his actions in his letter.

In an interview with Australian radio in July 1995, Irving claimed that at least four million Jews died in World War II, through he argued that this was due to terrible sanitary conditions inside the concentration camps as opposed to a delibrate policy of genocide in the death camps.

Irving's statement led to a very public spat with his former ally Faurisson, who insisted that no Jews were killed in the Holocaust.

In 1995, Irving stated in another speech that " I have to take off my hat to my adversaries and the strategies they have employed — the marketing of the very word Holocaust: I half expected to see a little TM after it ".

Likewise, depending on his audience, Irving during the 1990s has either used the absence of a written Führerbefehl ( Führer order ) for the " Final Solution " to argue that Hitler was unaware of the Holocaust, or that the absence of a written order meant there was no Holocaust.