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Message: <br /><br /> If you are having trouble reading this email, you may view this article online at: http://www.jweekly.com/1155/full/1155/german-tourism-worker-fired-for-holocaust-denial-views/ <br /><br /> <b>German tourism worker fired for Holocaust denial views</b> <br /> Friday, June 9, 1995 | by <p>ALEXANDRA J. WALL </p> <br /><br /><p>NEW YORK—An employee of the German Tourist Board with ties to the Holocaust denial movement was fired from her job last month, soon after her views were exposed.<br /><br /> Elke Berg worked for 18 years as director of special promotions for the tourist board, a body that officially represents the nation of Germany in the United States.<br /><br /> Berg apparently helped her husband, Friedrich Berg, with the translation of an article, "Typhus and the Jews," for a Holocaust denial publication, the Journal for Historical Review.<br /><br /> The article was published in the winter 1988-1989 edition of the journal, which denies that 6 million Jews were murdered in the Holocaust. The journal is published by the Institute of Historical Review of Torrance, Calif.<br /><br /> Mark Weitzman of the Simon Wiesenthal Center discovered Berg's connection to the denial movement last week, and wrote a letter May 10 to the German consul general of New York.<br /><br /> "Since Holocaust denial is a crime in Germany, it is astounding that a representative of an official German body can hold such a position," wrote Weitzman, director of the center's Task Force Against Hate.<br /><br /> One day later, Hans Heinrich von Stackelberg, acting consul general of New York, wrote to Weitzman that Berg was being dismissed, effective immediately.<br /><br /> "It is totally unacceptable for the German Consulate General, that government-subsidized agencies employ people with revisionist views," the consul general wrote to Weitzman.<br /><br /> He noted that Berg's translations, which had been written under her maiden name, Kniekamp, "would most likely be punishable under German criminal law."<br /><br /> Berg has reportedly claimed that her translations for the article were of a technical nature only.<br /><br /> She reputedly had been using her maiden name to avoid detection.<br /><br /> Friedrich Berg's activities have been tracked for years by the Wiesenthal Center, according to Weitzman, who called him "a prime source for Holocaust denial."<br /><br /> In the article "Typhus and the Jews," Friedrich Berg wrote:<br /><br /> "In my article about the German delousing chambers in the spring 1985 issue of this journal, I included a brief discussion of the large, well-designed gas chambers which were used to fumigate entire railroad trains, one or more railroad cars at a time, with Zyklon-B.<br /><br /> "Those chambers would have been ideal for the mass extermination of people if the Germans had ever intended to commit mass extermination of Jews or anyone else."<br /><br /> The article reaches the conclusion that "the Holocaust story is absurd," Weitzman said.<br /><br /> Weitzman said he was pleased with the German government's immediate attention to the matter.<br /><br /> "I am puzzled that she could work there 18 years without them knowing, but their response was very prompt," he said. "It was the morally right thing to do."</p> <p> </p>

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