What becomes of a down-on-his-luck historian, recently released from an Austrian jail, who bet his career on the premise that the Holocaust was not, in fact, the industrialized killing of European Jewry, but rather a great typhus epidemic for which Adolf Hitler bears no responsibility? The Daily Telegraph reports that disgraced historian David Irving, who now allows readers to download his books for free from his website, is getting into the Nazi memorabilia business:
Items up for sale on the site include Hitler's walking stick, available for £7,000, and a goblet and spoon given as a christening present by Heinrich Himmler to Hermann Goering's daughter, which can be bought for £4,000.
Irving authenticates the goods, which are offered by other sellers, and takes a 15 per cent cut commission.
The 70-year-old says he is currently trying to confirm the authenticity of bones said to be from Hitler and his girlfriend Eva Braun. Strands of the Fuhrer's hair are also expected to go on sale for £130,000.
Yes, David Irving is selling an Eva Braun vertebra on his website; a perfect gift for any aspiring member of Bund Deutscher Mädel. When Irving sued historian Deborah Lipstadt in 1996 for libel—and lost, of course—defense attorneys easily demonstrated that the Hitler's War author was a committed anti-Semite and racist, though he, of course, denied that he was motivated by race hatred. "You wish to call it racism," he told the presiding judge, "that is your choice. I call it patriotism." While locating the Bones of Braun auction on his website, I came across this latest "diary" entry in which, in a fit of patriotism, he describes his horror of being mentioned on a blog written by a black women. The woman claims to have met Irving outside of his Key West home, sometime in the mid-1990s, of which the brave dissident historian is skeptical:
While following [the Bishop Williamson] story, I stumble across a link to what is evidently a Negro "sisters'" blog which carries the following story about a 1995 episode of which I have only the dimmest memory, when we were staying in Newton Street [in Key West]… I was writing on the porch, and not in the habit of "greeting" passing Black females…How many errors can one make in just a dozen sentences? Thank God the Blacks do not rule America. Oh, I forgot.
