Poland- Polish senator who doubted Holocaust gets top role

Senator Ryszard Bender was named by President Lech Kaczynski as "speaker senior," a post that will give him ceremonial duties at the re-opening of parliament on November 5. The president's office said Bender was named because he was the oldest senator.

Bender has said in the past that the Nazi extermination camp of Auschwitz was "not a death camp, it was a labor camp."

"Someone like this should not have any political functions," said Stefan Niesiolowski, a senior official of the centre-right Civic Platform, which defeated the ruling party of Kaczynski and his twin brother the prime minister in the election.” We do not want to start with boycotts and fights, but this is a scandal," Niesiolowski told reporters.

In 2000, Bender questioned whether the Nazis had gassed people at Auschwitz

"Auschwitz was not a death camp, it was a labor camp. Jews, Gypsies and others were annihilated there through hard labor. Actually, labor was not always hard and not always were they annihilated," he told right-wing Catholic Radio Marjya.

Source: www.washingtonpost.com

Date: October 25, 2007

By Natalia Reiter

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