Jürgen Graf

Jürgen Graf
Born
Jürgen Graf

(1951-08-15) 15 August 1951 (age 73)
Basel, Switzerland
NationalitySwiss
Occupation(s)Teacher, author, translator
Known forHolocaust denial
Criminal chargesHolocaust denial

Jürgen Graf (born 15 August 1951) is a Swiss author, former teacher and Holocaust denier.[1][2][3][4][5][6] Since August 2000 he has been living in exile, and is currently living in Russia, working as a translator, with his wife.[1]

Background

Born in Basel, Graf studied philology at the University of Basel; English, Romance and Scandinavian studies, and in 1979 completed his licentiate.[1][7][8] Graf spent several years working as a school teacher teaching languages and later taught German at a Taipei school in Taiwan.[1] On his return to Basel, he worked as interrogator of asylum seekers at the receiving agency on the repurposed Rhine cruise ship Basilea. He described his experiences in his 1990 book The Ship of Fools (Das Narrenschiff), over which he was accused of xenophobia.

By the early 1990s, Graf was a convert to Holocaust denial, and was introduced to the field by his friend and retired school teacher Arthur Vogt through the works of Serge Thion, Arthur Butz and Wilhelm Stäglich.[1] During the 1990s, Graf published several Holocaust denial works, his first titled The Holocaust on trial: Eyewitness accounts versus natural laws (Der Holocaust auf dem Prüfstand: Augenzeugenberichte versus Naturgesetze),[1][9] several of his later books co-authored with the Italian Holocaust denier Carlo Mattogno.[1] Graf distributed his book to journalists and parliamentarians, establishing a reputation as a Holocaust denier. As the result, he was dismissed from his teaching position; he was later employed in a private school in Basel, teaching German to foreign students.[1]

Graf's publications eventually led Swiss authorities to prosecute him for violating Swiss anti-racism laws.[1] Graf and his then-publisher, Gerhard Förster, were tried by a Swiss court in July 1998; Graf was sentenced to a substantial fine and 15 months imprisonment.[1] He fled the country while awaiting his appeal, travelling through Poland, Russia, Ukraine and Turkey, ending in Iran, where a group of Iranian Holocaust deniers sheltered him in Tehran.[1] Graf subsequently relocated to Moscow, Russia, where he met and married a Belarusian woman in 2001.[1] He currently lives and works in Moscow as a translator.[1]

References

  1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m Atkins, Stephen E. (2009). Holocaust Denial as an International Movement. Westport, CT: Praeger Publishers. pp. 134–135. ISBN 978-0-313-34538-8.
  2. ^ "Learning Tools : Myth/Fact Sheets : There Are No Mass Graves At Treblinka". HDOT. 11 March 2013. Retrieved 30 July 2014.
  3. ^ Goldberg, Jonah (22 September 2013). "A Brief History of Iranian Holocaust Denial " Commentary Magazine". Commentarymagazine.com. Retrieved 30 July 2014.
  4. ^ "Western Deniers in the Middle East". Archive.adl.org. Archived from the original on 25 August 2014. Retrieved 30 July 2014.
  5. ^ "Midstream Magazine". Midstreamthf.com. Archived from the original on 4 March 2016. Retrieved 30 July 2014.
  6. ^ Israeli, Raphael (31 December 2011). Muslim Anti-Semitism in Christian Europe: Elemental and Residual Anti-Semitism - Raphael Israeli - Google Books. Transaction Publishers. ISBN 978-1-4128-1555-0. Retrieved 30 July 2014.
  7. ^ "Holocaust Handbooks: Jürgen Graf".
  8. ^ "Juergen Graf « Inconvenient History". Archived from the original on 30 June 2013. Retrieved 30 June 2013.
  9. ^ Graf, Jürgen (1993). Der Holocaust auf dem Prüfstand: Augenzeugenberichte versus Naturgesetze [The Holocaust on trial: Eyewitness accounts versus natural laws] (in German). Burg: Guideon Burg Verlag. ISBN 978-3-9520382-0-8.


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