John Gudenus

John Gudenus or John, Graf von Gudenus (23 November 1940 – 15 September 2016) was an Austrian member of the Federal Council of Austria on a free mandate (formerly as a member of the Freedom Party of Austria), and colonel of the Austrian Bundesheer.

Early life Born into the noble Gudenus family, he was born as the eldest child of Johann Baptist Theodor Franz de Paula Philipp Maria, Graf von Gudenus (1908-1968) and his Norwegian wife, Karin Giaever (1905-1980), who was distantly related to Ivar Giaever.

Biography In 2006, Gudenus received a one-year suspended sentence for breaking the Verbotsgesetz, Austria's laws against denying or diminishing the Holocaust. Gudenus had suggested that it was necessary to verify the existence of gas chambers in Nazi Germany and later remarked that there had been gas chambers in Poland but not in Germany.