A
Belgian Jewish newspaper filed an official complaint last week with the
country’s watchdog on journalism about a daily that published a Holocaust
denier’s claim that no one died in Nazi gas chambers.
The
Antwerp-based Joods Actueel monthly filed the complaint against the De
Morgen daily, the monthly’s editor-in-chief, Michael Freilich, told JTA
Monday.
In
its complaint against De Morgen, Joods Actueel cited legislation from 1995 that
forbids claiming the Holocaust did not happen – a law which Freilich claims was
broken both by De Morgen and by the newpaper’s interviewee, Siegfried
Verbeke.
In
an interview published earlier this month, Verbeke, a far-right symathizer with
multiple convictions for inciting racial hate against Jews and denying the
genocide, said: “Of course gas chambers existed, hundreds of them. To disinfect
the clothes of people who went through them. But gas chambers designed to kill
people never existed, no.”
The
Belgian state’s authority for combatting discrimination, ICGK, said it was
looking into legal action against Verbeke over this statement and Antwerp Mayor
Bart De Wever expressed support for his prosecution. But “De Morgen is for all
intents and purposes an accomplice in this offense, and should answer for its
actions,” Freilich said.
He
and the management at Joods Actueel complained to the Belgian Council for
Journalism over what they described as a “violation of ethics” regardless of
whether De Morgen is charged with breaking the law.
“Even
in the United States, where freedom of expression is greater than in Europe, a
major paper, like, say, The Washington Post, would not consider interviewing
David Duke,” Freilich said of that American Holocaust denier.
