NIGEL LAWSON writes on the case of Ursula Haverbeck, the elderly German woman sentenced to ten months in prison for stating that Auschwitz was a labor camp, not an extermination camp:

There are two possibilities: either she is right (or largely right) or she is wrong (or largely wrong). Let us assume that the latter is true. We then have a pitiful spectacle of an elderly person stubbornly and irrationally clinging to a mistaken view of historical events. Shakespeare’s King Lear is the archetypal work of art examining the ramifications of such a situation. As we watch Lear rave in misery on the heath, we feel compassion for him; but that does not stop us knowing that his disaster has been mainly self-inflicted as a result of his stubborn holding of illusions earlier in the action. None of us, however, would want to punish him for the awful threats he issues during his agon.

If Ms Haverbeck is wrong (and a formidable battery of opinion, including learned opinion, around the world maintains that she is), then what damage can her statements really do to anyone? As we say, rather rudely, in Australia: ‘You can’t fart against thunder.’

[As with every article I post here, this is not an endorsement of all views and articles at the site linked.]

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