Gerhard Förster (Holocaust denier)

Gerhard Förster (born March 22, 1920 in Waldenburg ( Lower Silesia ), † September 23, 1998 in Wettingen ) was a German-Swiss engineer , publisher and Holocaust denier . With his publishing house Neue Visionen, founded in Würenlos in 1994, he published right-wing extremist , revisionist and anti-Semitic literature, including writings by the Holocaust denier Jürgen Graf . That is why Graf and Förster were charged together in 1998 under the Swiss criminal law on racism . Förster was sentenced to one year in prison without parole.

Life

As a German soldier, Förster took part in the Second World War, but apparently completed a few front-line missions, instead studying engineering and becoming a technical officer. After the war worked in the field of radio and television technology . In 1967 he moved to Laboratories RCA Ltd. in Zurich , where he worked until his retirement in 1985. In 1981 he acquired Swiss citizenship .

The revisionist -minded forester met the Holocaust denier Jürgen Graf in 1993 , whom he commissioned to write a book about the Auschwitz extermination camp . Auschwitz came about with the support of the Italian Holocaust denier Carlo Mattogno . Confessions of perpetrators and eyewitnesses to the Holocaust . The book was published in 1994 by the newly founded publishing house Neue Visionen , which Förster managed as managing director and sole authorized signatory at his private address. In the first four years of existence, Förster published a dozen titles, including several anti-Semitic writings by Erich Glagau . The publishing house was seen as "an important pillar of the revisionists" in the German-speaking area.

On July 16, 1998, Förster and Jürgen Graf were charged with racial discrimination in front of the district court in Baden AG under the Swiss criminal law on racism and sentenced on July 21. While Graf received a sentence of 15 months in prison without parole, Förster became Auschwitz for the publication of Graf's writings : perpetrator confessions , cause of death, contemporary history research and Das Rotbuch. Sentenced from the fall of Swiss freedom and two books by Erich Glagau and Harold Cecil Robinson to 12 months in prison without parole and a fine of 8,000 CHF . In addition, the books were confiscated and the sales proceeds confiscated.

Förster also belonged to the ethnic - pagan Avalon community . He died without serving his sentence.

literature

• Peter Niggli, Jürg Frischknecht: Right rope teams. How the "creepy patriots" mastered the collapse of communism. Rotpunktverlag, Zurich 1998, ISBN 3-85869-165-8 , esp. Pp. 680–684.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Thomas Grumke , Bernd Wagner (ed.): Handbuch Rechtsradikalismus . People - organizations - networks from neo-Nazism to the middle of society. Leske + Budrich, Opladen 2002, p. 259.
2. ^ Friedrich-Wilhelm Schlomann: Neo-Nazi propaganda from abroad to Germany . Hanns Seidel Foundation, Munich 2000, p. 29.