Kriminál – Irving David (2015)

Until the early 1990s, David Irving was one of the best-selling historians focusing on World War II. However, in 2000, he lost a long-standing lawsuit against Deborah Lipstadt, who had claimed that Irving denied the Holocaust. After losing the trial, David Irving was forced to pay legal costs amounting to nearly two million pounds. Following this legal affair, increasing pressure was placed on Irving, which had been consistently applied since the publication of his 'controversial' book Hitler's War. This book allegedly downplays some of the crimes committed by members of Nazi Germany between 1933 and 1945. The book Kriminál recounts an unconventional episode in the author's life, during which he was forced to spend over a year in the Austrian prison Josefstadt. The reason for his detention and arrest was a lecture given over 15 years prior to an Austrian audience, where the historian was accused of Holocaust denial. During a potential visit to Vienna in 2005 (where the historian was scheduled to lecture students), Irving was detained by the police and subsequently placed in custody. The author of the book was later sentenced to three years in prison for the crime of Holocaust denial (a law from 1945 that was approved for...