Fredrick Töben

Fredrick Töben
File:Toben.jpg Dr. Töben standing in front of the Birkenau entrance
Born	Gerold Friedrich Töben 2 June 1944(1944-06-02) Jaderberg, Wesermarsch, German Reich
Died	29 June 2020 (aged 76) Australia
Ethnicity	German
Known for	Founder of the Adelaide Institute, a Holocaust critical group in Australia, conviction for breaching Germany's Holocaust Law

Gerald Fredrick Töben (2 June 1944 – 29 June 2020) was a highly qualified German Australien academic and a Holocaust revisionist. He was founder (1994) and director (until 2009) of the Adelaide Institute, and an author of works on education, political science, and history.

Early life

Born in Jaderburg, Lower Saxony, Germany, Töben's parents emigrated to Australia in 1954 where he subsequently became an Australian citizen. He spoke both German and English. He studied at the Victoria University of Wellington (BA 1968), in New Zealand, and at Australia's Melbourne University (BA 1970). Returning to Germany he qualified as a Doctor of Philosophy (1977) from Stuttgart University, and the following year gained a Certificate of Education from the University of Rhodesia. He taught at secondary level at Leongatha, Kings Park, St. Arnaud, and Goroke, and at tertiary level at the Warrnambool Institute of Advanced Education (now a part of Deakin University), all in Victoria, Australia. During 1981–82 he lectured at the Advanced College of Education, Minna, in Nigeria.

Holocaust

Töben rejected what he called the "official conspiracy theory" that Germans systematically exterminated European Jewry. He held that "the current U.S.A. government is influenced by world Zionist considerations to retain the survival of the European colonial, apartheid, Zionist, racist entity of Israel".

At first he edited a revisionist journal called Truth Missions, which was later renamed the Adelaide Institute Newsletter. He then broadened out to establish Australia's revisionist website, the Adelaide Institute. He has personally visited the site of Auschwitz and burrowed under the ruins of the alleged gas chamber, being unable to find the four holes in the roof which were supposedly used to throw in gas pellets.

Persecution

In 2008, the German federal authorities attempted unsuccessfully to extradite Töben from the United Kingdom, where he had transited while traveling, under a European Union arrest warrant, for allegedly publishing "antisemitic and/or revisionist" material on his website, which he writes from his home in Australia, and is a crime that does not exist in Britain. The English Magistrates Court in Westminster, London, dismissed his arrest warrant on October 29th. The case caused some controversy in the U.K., with the Liberal Democrats' Party Home Affairs spokesman Chris Huhne expressing concerns that the extradition would amount to an infringement on the freedom of speech. Also, British historian Geoffrey Alderman criticised Töben's arrest and the tendency "to enforce particular interpretations of history under the guise of 'combating racism and xenophobia'". According to him, "the task of the historian is to investigate, confront, challenge and, if necessary, correct society's collective memory. In this process, the state ought to have no role whatever, none at all. Certainly not in the UK, which delights in presenting itself as a bastion of academic freedom."

Töben was subsequently arrested during an April 1999 visit to Prosecutor Klein in Mannheim, Germany, for a private discussion on the Holocaust laws in Germany, which make it mandatory to accept all aspects of the Holocaust story. He was sentenced to 9 months imprisonment.

Iran

Töben visited Iran in 2003 where he presented a speech denying the Holocaust. In 2005 in an interview with Iranian state television he indicated that it was his belief that "Israel is founded on the Holocaust lie." In December 2006, he and other prominent figures, including Robert Faurisson, took part in the International Conference to Review the Global Vision of the Holocaust, in Tehran sponsored by the Iranian Government. Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki said the conference sought "neither to deny nor prove the Holocaust... [but] to provide an appropriate scientific atmosphere for scholars to offer their opinions in freedom about a historical issue". The conference provoked strong criticism: the Vatican condemned it, the Executive Office of American President George W. Bush called it an "affront to the entire civilized world," and British socialist Prime Minister Tony Blair described it as "shocking beyond belief."

External links

• Adelaide Institute
• Revisionists.com: Fredrick Töben

Article archives

• Codoh: Revisionst Personalities: Töben, Fredrick
• Codoh: Authors: Fredrick Töben

References

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