ByRobyn Rosen, Robyn Rosen
Anti-racism campaigners have slammed the "gutless" Polish government for not taking further action against Holocaust-denier David Irving's planned tour of a Nazi death camp.
Irving, who served a prison sentence for Holocaust denial in Austria in 2006, will hold a guided week-long tour from Tuesday in Warsaw and will include visits to Hitler's Wolf Lair headquarters in Poland.
The brochure for the trip offers a tour of a "real death camp" and says: "Forget the phoney allures, mass-tourism and 'reconstructions' of modern-day Auschwitz - the erstwhile slave-labour camp turned into a tourist attraction, complete with hot-dog vendors and souvenir stands."
A joint statement by anti-fascist organisation Searchlight and Polish group, the Never Again Association, said: "We call on all Polish anti-fascists to turn out and protest at every venue that Irving thinks he can visit unhindered to insult the memory of survivors and the resistance."
Mark Gardner, of the Community Security Trust, said: "It is stomach-turning to think of the disgraced David Irving leading some sort of perverted tour group to sites of Jewish memory and tragedy such as Warsaw and Treblinka."
Robert Szaniawski, spokesman for the Polish embassy, said: "The Embassy of the Republic of Poland strongly empathises with the Jewish community and understands the concern expressed by campaign groups and Holocaust survivors." He said the visit would be closely monitored.