Madam, - While I share many of Alan Shatter's views about Holocaust deniers (Opinion & Analysis, March 1st) I cannot share his view that the jail sentence on David Irving is warranted.
I come from a Jewish background and it is estimated that, during the 1939-45 period, 45 per cent of those bearing my family name worldwide were murdered. It may seem strange, therefore, for me to suggest that Irving should not have been imprisoned. However, I feel that imprisonment legitimises and somehow adds weight to his ludicrous claims. Rather, Irving and others who deny the murder of 6 million people should be mocked and treated in the same way we treat those who claim Elvis is alive or that UFOs are watching our every move.
Anti-Semitism pre-dates Christianity and will be around long after I am dead and gone. So I accept that many people will always hate. Let them do so; if there is one thing that fascism taught us is that freedom of speech and democracy should be protected at all costs. When we start locking people up for their views, no matter how outlandish or offensive, we become no better than they are. - Yours, etc,
ALEX BENJAMIN, Belmont Road, Belfast 4.
Madam, - On page 12 of your edition of March 1st is a small photograph of the disgraced British historian David Irving. In an idle moment, I pencilled in the downswept hair and ridiculous moustache of his pet subject, the late and unlamented Führer, Adolf Hitler. The resulting likeness was startling.
Could it be that Mr Irving, in the manner of The Third Policeman, from your own late, great Myles na Gopaleen, has suffered a sort of molecular migration, becoming his own subject, bit by bit?- Yours, etc,
DAVID GRANT, Mount Pleasant, Waterford.