May 15, 2000

Teacher sentenced for denying holocaust

By Vanessa Medley

A TEACHER who told his pupils at a secondary school in France that the Nazi gas chambers were for disinfecting Jews was found guilty today of denying the holocaust.

Jean-Louis Berger, a former candidate for the far-right National Front, was given a 10-month suspended prison sentence and ordered to pay £7,000 damages to civil plaintiffs in the case.

A court in the town of Sarreguemines, 60 miles east of Strasbourg on the French-German border, heard that Berger, a 53 year-old literature teacher, told his class that ovens at extermination camps were used to burn rubbish and clothes, and that the Jews opened the way to World War II by setting fire to the Reichstag in 1933.

He also said that British and American bombs killed many of those said to have died in concentration camps.

During his trial Berger refused to retract his remarks, even after a historian of World War II and a former Auschwitz inmate were called to give evidence.

“The witnesses have spoken without bringing any proof. I have heard the same old mistakes,” he told the court.