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Banged Up: Survival as a Political Prisoner in 21st Century Europe
O NTEIBINT IPBINΓK ΘYMATAI TIΣ TETPAKOΣIEΣ HMEPEΣ ΠOY ΠEPAΣE ΣTHN AΠOMONΩΣH THΣ ΠAΛAIOTEPHΣ ΦYΛAKHΣ THΣ AYΣTPIAΣ OTAN, BAΣEI ENOΣ ΣTAΛINIKOY NOMOY TOY 1945, KATAΔIKAΣTHKE TO 2005 ΣE ΦYΛAKIΣH ΓIA MIA IΣTOPIKH ΔIAΛEΞH ΠOY EIXE ΔΩΣEI ΠPIN AΠO ΔEKAEΞI XPONIA."TO MONO ΠOY ΠAPATHPHΣA, EKTOΣ AΠO OΔOΦPAΓMATA KAI EΛIKOΠTEPA ΠOY ΠETOYΣAN ΠANΩ AΠO TO KEΦAΛI MOY, HTAN ΠΩΣ META THN KATAΔIKH MOY HMOYN ΠEPIKYKΛΩMENOΣ AΠO OKTΩ AΣTYNOMIKOYΣ TΩN EIΔIKΩN ΔYNAMEΩN ME ΠEPIBOΛH MAXHΣ KAI ME AYTOMATA GLOCK, OI OΠOIOI ME OΔHΓHΣAN BIAΣTIKA ΣTO KEΛI MOY MEΣA AΠO ENAN ΛABYPINΘO MYΣTIKΩN ΠEPAΣMATΩN KAI EΞΩTEPIKΩN ΣKAΛIΩN. TΩPA ΞEPΩ TO ΛOΓO"."NAI", EΓPAΨA KOPOIΔEYTIKA Σ' ENA ΦIΛO ΣTH BIPTZINIA TΩN HΠA, ΣTIΣ 10 NOEMBPIOY TOY 2006: "ΣTIΣ HMEPEΣ MAΣ ΓINETAI ΠPAΓMATIKA OΛO KAI ΠIO EΠIKINΔYNO NA EINAI KANEIΣ ΠPAΓMATIKOΣ IΣTOPIKOΣ.
- GenresHistory
146 pages, Hardcover
First published October 23, 2008
1 person is currently reading
112 people want to read
About the author
David Irving
50 books424 followersDavid John Cawdell Irving is an English author who has written on the military and political history of World War II, especially Nazi Germany. He was found to be a Holocaust denier in a UK court in 2000 as a result of a failed libel case.
Irving's works include The Destruction of Dresden (1963), Hitler's War (1977), Churchill's War (1987) and Goebbels: Mastermind of the Third Reich (1996). In his works, he argued that Adolf Hitler did not know of the extermination of Jews, or, if he did, he opposed it. Though Irving's negationist claims and views of German war crimes in World War II (and Hitler's responsibility for them) were never taken seriously by mainstream historians, he was once recognised for his knowledge of Nazi Germany and his ability to unearth new historical documents, which he held closely but stated were fully supportive of his conclusions. His 1964 book The Mare's Nest about Germany's V-weapons campaign of 1944-45 was praised for its deep research but criticised for minimising Nazi slave labour programmes.
By the late 1980s, Irving had placed himself outside the mainstream of the study of history, and had begun to turn from "'soft-core' to 'hard-core' Holocaust denial", possibly influenced by the 1988 trial of Holocaust denier Ernst Zündel. That trial, and his reading of the pseudoscientific Leuchter report, led him to openly espouse Holocaust denial, specifically denying that Jews were murdered by gassing at the Auschwitz concentration camp.
Irving's reputation as a historian was further discredited in 2000, when, in the course of an unsuccessful libel case he filed against the American historian Deborah Lipstadt and Penguin Books, High Court Judge Charles Gray determined in his ruling that Irving willfully misrepresented historical evidence to promote Holocaust denial and whitewash the Nazis, a view shared by many prominent historians. The English court found that Irving was an active Holocaust denier, antisemite and racist, who "for his own ideological reasons persistently and deliberately misrepresented and manipulated historical evidence". In addition, the court found that Irving's books had distorted the history of Hitler's role in the Holocaust to depict Hitler in a favourable light.
Irving's works include The Destruction of Dresden (1963), Hitler's War (1977), Churchill's War (1987) and Goebbels: Mastermind of the Third Reich (1996). In his works, he argued that Adolf Hitler did not know of the extermination of Jews, or, if he did, he opposed it. Though Irving's negationist claims and views of German war crimes in World War II (and Hitler's responsibility for them) were never taken seriously by mainstream historians, he was once recognised for his knowledge of Nazi Germany and his ability to unearth new historical documents, which he held closely but stated were fully supportive of his conclusions. His 1964 book The Mare's Nest about Germany's V-weapons campaign of 1944-45 was praised for its deep research but criticised for minimising Nazi slave labour programmes.
By the late 1980s, Irving had placed himself outside the mainstream of the study of history, and had begun to turn from "'soft-core' to 'hard-core' Holocaust denial", possibly influenced by the 1988 trial of Holocaust denier Ernst Zündel. That trial, and his reading of the pseudoscientific Leuchter report, led him to openly espouse Holocaust denial, specifically denying that Jews were murdered by gassing at the Auschwitz concentration camp.
Irving's reputation as a historian was further discredited in 2000, when, in the course of an unsuccessful libel case he filed against the American historian Deborah Lipstadt and Penguin Books, High Court Judge Charles Gray determined in his ruling that Irving willfully misrepresented historical evidence to promote Holocaust denial and whitewash the Nazis, a view shared by many prominent historians. The English court found that Irving was an active Holocaust denier, antisemite and racist, who "for his own ideological reasons persistently and deliberately misrepresented and manipulated historical evidence". In addition, the court found that Irving's books had distorted the history of Hitler's role in the Holocaust to depict Hitler in a favourable light.
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
May 11, 2010
"Human Memory is like an onion. Once you have peeled of one skin and written down what you find, you realize the next time you look that there was another layer of forgotten memories just beneath."
A scintillating autobiographical account of David Irving’s arrest and 400 days (November 2005 to December 2006 ) of solitary confinement in an Austrian prison for uttering politically illegal and trifling annotations on the Holocaust. The controversial 'Show-Trial'was held at Vienna on Feb,2-2006 leading to his imprisonment and banishment from Austria after the release.
A scintillating autobiographical account of David Irving’s arrest and 400 days (November 2005 to December 2006 ) of solitary confinement in an Austrian prison for uttering politically illegal and trifling annotations on the Holocaust. The controversial 'Show-Trial'was held at Vienna on Feb,2-2006 leading to his imprisonment and banishment from Austria after the release.
April 13, 2017
I came across this entirely by accident while trying to find the title of a book I read many years ago. It was a memoir of a cocaine dealer, and I still haven't found it but somehow I ended up reading a memoir of discredited historian David Irving's time in an Austrian prison. Why is the whole of this book freely available on the internet? I asked myself. It seemed to be some cautionary tale about a man who had been imprisoned merely for being a historian. That can't be right, I thought, so I looked Irving up on Wikipedia. Ah. Something about holocaust denial. I don't have any sympathy for holocaust deniers, and here I would probably have stopped reading had it not been for two things:
1. I have a "crackpots" shelf here on Goodreads, and a memoir by a holocaust denier would seem to be good fodder for that. Let's read on, and see just how crazy and deluded he is.
2. It's only one hundred and fifty odd pages, and I seemed to be trundling along at a fair old clip - in fact the whole thing took little more than three hours to read.
So, from reading this it appears that Irving is not a holocaust denier, he was just misled by some evidence some time ago, and according to this memoir, has since corrected that error. This however did not stop him being arrested and charged by the Austrian government with trivialising, grossly playing down and denying the Holocaust 16 years later. Wikipedia goes on to state that an English court has found that Irving was "an active Holocaust denier, antisemite, and racist, who "for his own ideological reasons persistently and deliberately misrepresented and manipulated historical evidence"". The plot thickens.
This would appear then, to be Irving's chance to repudiate the charges against him and to set the record straight once and for all. Oddly it doesn't really work out that way. He does state “Nobody in their right mind can deny that the Nazis did kill millions of Jews,”, but he doesn't go very deeply into why he thought whatever he did in the first place, and what changed his mind - he barely even scratches the surface, merely saying another document came to light. The effect is such that you feel he is underselling the whole thing, perhaps deliberately, because he still has trouble accepting any historical indiscretions he might have made. He isn't, on the other hand, shy about his opinion that historians in Europe aren't allowed to go against the accepted narrative - which over the course of 150 pages starts to sound a bit suspect.
On top of all that he comes across as self-righteous, snarky, smirking, bitter and yes, even racist. He also crosses over into misogyny on a couple of occasions, making irrelevant references to the appearance of women in terms of how many buses they could stop. You'd think having looks that could stop a bus would be a good thing, but apparently not. About the jury that convicts him he says, "seven of its eight members were stolid, slab-featured, middle-aged Viennese Hausfrau type women,with a bus-stopping range of perhaps a hundred yards or more," making no reference to the final member at all - presumably he was a man. He is also derogatory towards midgets and calls homosexuals "ghastly". Finally he disparages some Romanian deportees that he shares a transport with and refers to non-Europeans also being held in his Austrian prison as "alien scum".
To some of you, all of those things might be ok because, let's face it, some people are racist, misogynistic, homophobic, small minded bigots, and you might be one of those people. To me though, it isn't ok. It does sound like Irving probably shouldn't have served any time in this prison, but frankly I don't know for sure what to believe. I've read the rest of that Wikipedia article, and over the years Irving has said and done some pretty reprehensible things. I can't even trust that the details within this memoir are accurately represented. Overall, the work is brief, the details vague, the opinions objectionable (if watered down slightly) and Irving well deserving of a place in the Crackpots file. It's fairly readable though, and hence, 2 stars.
Oh yeah, there's also a point where he says that you can't believe all you're told because he reads "The Collected Works of Sherlock Holmes" and the great detective doesn't say "Elementary, my dear Watson" even once. I think the lesson here is to take that advice of not believing all you're told, and apply it to this work by Irving. Oh, the irony.
1. I have a "crackpots" shelf here on Goodreads, and a memoir by a holocaust denier would seem to be good fodder for that. Let's read on, and see just how crazy and deluded he is.
2. It's only one hundred and fifty odd pages, and I seemed to be trundling along at a fair old clip - in fact the whole thing took little more than three hours to read.
So, from reading this it appears that Irving is not a holocaust denier, he was just misled by some evidence some time ago, and according to this memoir, has since corrected that error. This however did not stop him being arrested and charged by the Austrian government with trivialising, grossly playing down and denying the Holocaust 16 years later. Wikipedia goes on to state that an English court has found that Irving was "an active Holocaust denier, antisemite, and racist, who "for his own ideological reasons persistently and deliberately misrepresented and manipulated historical evidence"". The plot thickens.
This would appear then, to be Irving's chance to repudiate the charges against him and to set the record straight once and for all. Oddly it doesn't really work out that way. He does state “Nobody in their right mind can deny that the Nazis did kill millions of Jews,”, but he doesn't go very deeply into why he thought whatever he did in the first place, and what changed his mind - he barely even scratches the surface, merely saying another document came to light. The effect is such that you feel he is underselling the whole thing, perhaps deliberately, because he still has trouble accepting any historical indiscretions he might have made. He isn't, on the other hand, shy about his opinion that historians in Europe aren't allowed to go against the accepted narrative - which over the course of 150 pages starts to sound a bit suspect.
On top of all that he comes across as self-righteous, snarky, smirking, bitter and yes, even racist. He also crosses over into misogyny on a couple of occasions, making irrelevant references to the appearance of women in terms of how many buses they could stop. You'd think having looks that could stop a bus would be a good thing, but apparently not. About the jury that convicts him he says, "seven of its eight members were stolid, slab-featured, middle-aged Viennese Hausfrau type women,with a bus-stopping range of perhaps a hundred yards or more," making no reference to the final member at all - presumably he was a man. He is also derogatory towards midgets and calls homosexuals "ghastly". Finally he disparages some Romanian deportees that he shares a transport with and refers to non-Europeans also being held in his Austrian prison as "alien scum".
To some of you, all of those things might be ok because, let's face it, some people are racist, misogynistic, homophobic, small minded bigots, and you might be one of those people. To me though, it isn't ok. It does sound like Irving probably shouldn't have served any time in this prison, but frankly I don't know for sure what to believe. I've read the rest of that Wikipedia article, and over the years Irving has said and done some pretty reprehensible things. I can't even trust that the details within this memoir are accurately represented. Overall, the work is brief, the details vague, the opinions objectionable (if watered down slightly) and Irving well deserving of a place in the Crackpots file. It's fairly readable though, and hence, 2 stars.
Oh yeah, there's also a point where he says that you can't believe all you're told because he reads "The Collected Works of Sherlock Holmes" and the great detective doesn't say "Elementary, my dear Watson" even once. I think the lesson here is to take that advice of not believing all you're told, and apply it to this work by Irving. Oh, the irony.
June 29, 2023
Banged Up is the tale of a historian who found himself imprisoned (in Austria) for a speech he made at a meeting sixteen years before. Mr Irving did not murder or rape anyone, he just gave a speech to an audience with his opinions. Opinions that people can either accept or disregard, that choice is on the listener. Although I assume anyone not interested in Mr Irving's opinions wouldn't have been at that meeting in the first place!
Of course, some would have clapped and cheered at the three year sentence handed down to Mr Irving, blinded by their ideology to the bigger picture. Banged Up is the type of book that should be read by these people as a lesson to show what can happen when free speech is curtailed by draconian government laws. Those people often have strong opinions of their own, how long before the cultural wind changes and people come knocking on their door?! After all, books are already being re-edited and people are being cancelled, all because of modern opinions. Is democracy so fragile that governments need to enact laws that lock people up for expressing a different opinion?
The book itself is novella length and is written in the first person, which gives us some insights and funny observations from the author. I'm not sure locking an author up in solitary confinement and then allowing them a pen and some paper, plus a lot of peace, to write a book is much of a punishment though!
Of course, some would have clapped and cheered at the three year sentence handed down to Mr Irving, blinded by their ideology to the bigger picture. Banged Up is the type of book that should be read by these people as a lesson to show what can happen when free speech is curtailed by draconian government laws. Those people often have strong opinions of their own, how long before the cultural wind changes and people come knocking on their door?! After all, books are already being re-edited and people are being cancelled, all because of modern opinions. Is democracy so fragile that governments need to enact laws that lock people up for expressing a different opinion?
The book itself is novella length and is written in the first person, which gives us some insights and funny observations from the author. I'm not sure locking an author up in solitary confinement and then allowing them a pen and some paper, plus a lot of peace, to write a book is much of a punishment though!
October 29, 2024
David Irving was jailed in Austria for effectively thinking differently to official histories of the WW2 Jewish holocaust.
For this he was labelled a holocaust denier.
Is one not allowed to investigate this story when it's been acknowledged that most of it is still unknown?
If you're David Irving you cannot.
His real crime is to make Nazis like Hitler look human in his books and that's a no no today.
Well his jailing conviction was rightly overturned as this was yet another attack on free speech and haven't we seen a lot of that during the Covid19 pandemic showing us we never learn.
Today we have an insidious cult that will cut anyone down who disagrees with an "official" narrative.
Galileo anyone?
His books are worth reading for those who haven't tried them particularly the bombing of Dresden , Rommel, Goring, Convoy PQ17 and the Luftwaffe history.
For this he was labelled a holocaust denier.
Is one not allowed to investigate this story when it's been acknowledged that most of it is still unknown?
If you're David Irving you cannot.
His real crime is to make Nazis like Hitler look human in his books and that's a no no today.
Well his jailing conviction was rightly overturned as this was yet another attack on free speech and haven't we seen a lot of that during the Covid19 pandemic showing us we never learn.
Today we have an insidious cult that will cut anyone down who disagrees with an "official" narrative.
Galileo anyone?
His books are worth reading for those who haven't tried them particularly the bombing of Dresden , Rommel, Goring, Convoy PQ17 and the Luftwaffe history.
January 1, 2025
This story is well written and I found it to be an easy read. Having read it I am now trying to sort out my thoughts on what was illuminated for me about the censorship of this man and the costs to he and his family and society as well. It gave me insight as to how the censorship machine works and the use in some countries of backroom deals, even in courts of law, to bring about a desired outcome. This book has given me a great deal to think about and for a good many to come.
August 1, 2016
Οι αναμνήσεις του ιστορικού D.Irving που κατηγορήθηκε ως αρνητής του ολοκαυτώματος από την κράτησή του στις αυστριακές φυλακές.
Αξιόλογο έργο, μας δείχνει το κατά πόσο τελικά υπάρχει η ελευθεροτυπία στη σύγχρονη Ευρώπη σε θέματα που ακόμα αποτελούν ταμπού.
Αξιόλογο έργο, μας δείχνει το κατά πόσο τελικά υπάρχει η ελευθεροτυπία στη σύγχρονη Ευρώπη σε θέματα που ακόμα αποτελούν ταμπού.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews