(JTA) — A British blogger who posted songs on YouTube denying the Holocaust and mocking survivors is on trial.
British media reported Wednesday that Alison Chabloz has been charged with “sending obscene material by public communication.”
She appeared to sing along with the three songs in question as they were played in a London court on the first day of her trial, media reported, and her followers in the gallery laughed and sang along too.
Lyrics were along the lines of “‘Was it just a bunch of lies? Seems that some intend to pull the wool over our eyes.” Figures she attacked in her song “Tell Me More Lies” included Anne Frank, the young diarist who perished during the Holocaust; her father, Otto Frank; and Elie Wiesel, the late Holocaust memoirist and Nobel Peace Prize laureate. She accuses Jews of unscrupulous money-lending practices and she calls Auschwitz, the Nazi death camp, a “theme park for fools.”
The BBC quoted prosecutor Karen Robinson as saying that line “is an extraordinarily offensive description of perhaps the most traumatic event in Jewish history”.
Chabloz’s web site describes her as a one-time classroom music teacher, choir conductor and local newspaper editor, as well as “a fierce anti-Zionist campaigner for freedom of expression and, in particular, Holocaust revisionism.”
According to her blog, the charges have led to a drop off in her appearances as a folksinger in northern England, where she lives, and on cruise ships.
She is defending herself by citing speech freedoms.
