Jewish historian Arno Lustiger has filed a lawsuit against Vanity Fair magazine for publishing an interview with one of the most rabid neo-Nazis and Holocaust deniers of all time: Horst Mahler.
The monthly fashion magazine published the article on Mahler in the November edition of its German edition.
Lustiger, who is a survivor of the Nazi genocide, contended in the November 7 lawsuit that Mahler denied and minimized the Holocaust. Holocaust denial is against the law in Germany.
Lustiger is joined by the journalist who wrote the story for the magazine. Author Michael Friedman himself also filed charges against neo-Nazi Mahler after the interview for his "incendiary" remarks.
During the two-hour interview, Mahler praised Adolf Hitler as "the liberator of the German people," adding, "He is demonized as the liberator of Satan." Freshly released in August 2007 after having served a nine-month jail term for incitement to hate, Mahler greeted his interviewer by saying, "Heil Hitler."
Friedman, an attorney and former leader in the German Jewish community, said he had intended to question the neo-Nazi about his past as a founding member of the extreme-left Red Army Faction (RAF) 30 years ago.
After the interview, which Friedman said was dominated by Mahler's pro-Hitler ranting, the journalist commented that neo-Nazi terror is "not only a reality of the past but also of the present."
Ulf Poschardt, editor-in-chief of the German edition of Vanity Fair, acknowledged in his magazine editorial that the neo-Nazi said things in the interview "that are banned in Germany." He defended the magazine's decision to publish the article, however, saying the author's "courageous interview gives an important insight into the deep chasms that this society must confront."
Poschardt added that he had wanted to confront German citizens with the reality found in recent polls that showed secret grassroots approval of neo-Nazi ideology.
There has been a firestorm in response to the article. The secretary-general of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, Stephan Kramer, told the Der Tagesspiegel newspaper that the interview was "unspeakable and completely without justification."
Leading politicians across the spectrum, including the Social Democratic, Christian Democratic and Left parties, all slammed the magazine's decision to publish the interview as well.
The 71-year-old Mahler is going back to jail for the sixth time after being sentenced this week to a six-month term for giving the 'Heil Hitler' salute and calling out 'Heil Hitler' as he was led to his prison cell a year ago.
Before joining the neo-Nazi movement, Mahler received training in guerrilla tactics from the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) terrorist organization in Jordan. He fled there to escape trial for bank robberies he committed in Germany.
Mahler has also been jailed for praising the September 11, 2001 attack on the United States by the international Al-Qaeda terrorist organization, which felled the Twin Towers at the World Trade Center while also striking the Pentagon.