'Nazi Grandma,' Holocaust Denier Is Attacked During Germany Trial Of Former Auschwitz Guard

A German woman convicted last year of denying the Holocaust had to be removed Thursday from a German courtroom during the trial of a former concentration camp guard charged with at least 170,000 counts of accessory to murder after the woman, dubbed by German media the “Nazi Grandma,” was attacked, the Local reported.

Ursula Haverbeck, 87, tried to attend the opening of the trial in Hamburg of Auschwitz guard Reinhold Hanning, but eventually had to be taken away by police in a car after being physically harassed. She was sentenced to serve 10 months in prison in November after being charged with sedition over statements she made that Jews were not killed in the Nazi death camps, and that Auschwitz was just a labor camp, the Daily Mail reported. At least 1.1 million people were murdered in Auschwitz before the camp was liberated by the Soviets in January 1945, and nearly 6 million Jews in total were killed in the Holocaust.

“The Holocaust is the biggest and most sustainable lie in history,” Haverbeck has been quoted as saying. Holocaust denial is a crime in Germany.

Besides being a Holocaust denier, Haverbeck also was the chairwoman of an extreme right-wing training center that spread Nazi propaganda, but was shut down in 2008. Seventy-one year after the end of World War II, the case of Hanning, 94, is thought to be one of the last of its kind, the BBC reported.

Hanning was an Auschwitz guard in 1943 and 1944, and prosecutors say he was one of the men who met Jews when they arrived at the camp on trains and that he may have taken them to the gas chambers. Hanning has denied being involved in the mass murder that took place at the camp, but did admit he was a guard at there.

The Local's report cited the Deutsche Presse-Agentur news agency.