Germans were not brutal, court told
Andrew Darby
By Andrew Darby
Launceston
May 2 2002
Germany did not engage in organised brutality during World War II, a woman has claimed in the Federal Court.
In the first anti-semitism case to be heard under the Racial Discrimination Act, Olga Scully, of Launceston, yesterday said the Germans had been falsely depicted as fiends.
Her brother, Michael Sladd, told the court that he heard nothing about Nazi extermination camps when their family was in a displaced persons camp in Germany. He said his sister was doing a service to the world in bringing out the truth.
The Executive Council of Australian Jewry is asking the court to enforce orders by the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission last year.
The orders restrained Mrs Scully from distributing leaflets and videos, and said she must apologise for the unlawful activity.
The council told the court the material that Mrs Scully put in letterboxes in Launceston homes was based on racial hatred.
It included references to Jews as "leeches" involved in "destroying white society".
Council president Jeremy Jones laid the complaint.
Mr Sladd, of West Moonah, Hobart, said their family fled Brynsk in Russia in 1944 for Germany when he was nine.
He said the Germans had been helpful to the family when they were refugees, and they had spent time in a displaced persons camp near Hamburg before emigrating to Australia. Mr Sladd said he had heard only of "isolated cases" of German brutality.
Mrs Scully, who is representing herself, presented a series of videotapes, of which, she said, disputed claims that the bodies of concentration camp victims were burnt in gas ovens.
"It tries to make the Germans out to being some heinous fiends, but there is nothing to it other than a normal cremation," she said.
The videotapes produced evidence that had been concealed for years, she said. They showed that the Auschwitz camp had a swimming pool, school and theatre.
The case, before Justice Peter Hely, is continuing.
http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2002/05/01/1019441390795.html