Ditlieb Felderer

Ditlieb Felderer (b. 23 April 1942), also spelled Dietlieb Felderer, is a Swedish historical negationist known for Holocaust denial. He was an acolyte of Einar Åberg who was as committed to antisemitism as Åberg himself.

Background Ditlieb Felderer was born 23 April 1942 in Innsbruck, Austria. His family fled German-conrolled territory, first to Italy, then to Sweden.

He was born Jewish but converted to the Jehovah's Witnesses in 1959. He began to research the persecution of Jehovah's Witnesses in Nazi Germany and in the early 1970s, produced a thesis on the persecutions. It had been claimed that 60,000 Jehovah's Witnesses had been persecuted by the Nazis, but Felderer claimed that was more likely around 200. He was excommunicated from the church when his findings challenged the official view of the church. As he took an interest in the Holocaust, he traveled to Auschwitz concentration camp in the 1970s.

Under Sweden's antisemitism laws, he was charged with expressing contempt for Jews and spreading antisemitic material, a crime for which he was sentenced to 10 months in prison. He was the first person in Sweden to receive a sentence of this length for this crime. Founder of the Institute for Historical Review David McCalden supported Felderer during this time.

Holocaust denial In 1978, in a book published under his own imprint, Bible Researcher, titled Anne Frank's Diary—A Hoax (Swedish: Il Diario Di Anna Frank: Una Frod), he claimed that The Diary of a Young Girl was a hoax. It was later republished by Institute for Historical Review in 1990. In the book, Felderer questions the feasibility that a young girl wrote the diary.

In 1979, he published Auschwitz Exit using the nom de plume Abraham Cohen.

In the 1980s, Felderer began publishing Holocaust porn known as "pornocaust".

In 1981, Felderer was included in a lawsuit against Liberty Lobby, Institute for Historical Review, and Willis Carto brought by Holocaust survivor Mel Mermelstein. IHR had offered a $50,000 reward to anyone who could prove that Jews were killed by poison gas at Auschwitz. Mermelstein, who said his mother and sister were killed by the Nazis, attempted to collect the reward. Mermelstein sought damages of $17 million when the IHR refused to pay.

In 1983, the Swedish government ordered Felderer to undergo psychiatric treatment.

Felderer sent flyers to the staff of the Auschwitz museum in Poland with the title Please Accept This Hair of a Gassed Victim. In 1985, he stood trial in Sweden for sending the flyers and served 10 months in prison.

Felderer was a witness in R v Zundel in which he testified that the gas chambers at Auschwitz were only used for storage. During the trial, attorney for the Crown Peter Griffiths used Felderer's pamphlets to expose the abusive language of negationism. During the defense examination, Felderer was permitted to present slides from his visit to Auschwitz and he testified that Auschwitz had a swimming pool, a dance hall, and a music auditorium. The Toronto Star would report this with the headline "Prisoners at Auschwitz Dined, Danced to Bands Zundel Witness Testified".

Some of Felderer's claims against the validity of Auschwitz as a death camp were that the ovens were manufactured in 1966-1967 and that there were no exhaust chimneys, which would have made them inoperable.

Felderer also claimed the existence of the Treblinka extermination camp was based on hearsay and weak evidence, concluding that its existence was doubtful.

By the mid-1990s, Felderer began to lose interest in Holocaust denial and was ultimately dropped from the IHR editorial board. He moved to the Canary Islands and began publishing pornography.

Works

Anne Frank's Diary—A Hoax Tortured in Sweden