Together with his brother Herbert, V. established in 1983 the revisionist publishing center Vrij Historisch Onderzook (“Free Historical Inquiry”), or VHO, which soon became the leading European publisher of writings skeptical of the orthodox Holocaust story. Over the years VHO published a range of books, booklets and tracts in Dutch, French, German and English. VHO publications have included a 125-page booklet, issued in 1991, by V. and French scholar Robert Faurisson, that presents a critical look at the Anne Frank diary, and Auschwitz: Nackte Fakten (“Auschwitz: Naked Facts”), a 179-page work issued in 1995.

Since more than 20 years, government authorities have harassed, fined and jailed V. for his dissident views. In 1992 a Belgian court imposed on V. a one-year suspended prison term for distributing writings that play down or belittle the Holocaust. He was also stripped of his civil rights for ten years, including his right to vote. In 1992 four Netherlands organizations - the B’nai B’rith, the Center for information and Documentation on Israel, the Anne Frank Foundation, and the National Bureau for Combating Racism - brought a joint civil lawsuit against V. for circulating material, including the 'Leuchter Report', that calls into question the official view of the Holocaust. In late 1992 a Netherlands court ordered Verbeke to pay 10,000 Dutch guilders (about $6,000) for each violation.

In 1993 the Anne Frank Foundation in the Netherlands and the Anne Frank Fund in Switzerland brought a lawsuit in the Netherlands against V. and Robert Faurisson, for having published a booklet on the Anne Frank diary. The defendants were charged with slander, outrage, abuse toward a group, and incitement to hatred, discrimination or violence. “It must be remembered,” the lawsuit charged, “that for years Anne Frank has been the symbol of the Jews who were victims of the Holocaust. In this way, her name and her diary assume an additional value. Therefore, one has to expect that in this connection oral or written arguments will be subjected to a greater prudence from a social point of view, than Dutch law generally requires.” In 1994 V. distributed a Dutch-language edition of the 'Rudolf Report'.

In 1995 Belgium’s parliament approved a new anti-revisionist law, similar to those already in force in France, Germany and Austria, making it a crime to dispute the official Holocaust story. According to the new law, anyone who denies, plays down or seeks to justify “the genocide of the German National Socialist regime during the Second World War” may be punished with a fine or a prison term of up to one year. In 1995, V. hit the headlines again by trying to get political asylum in the Netherlands. In 1998 the public prosecutor in Frankfurt, Germany, launched criminal proceedings against V. for mailing a booklet on “Goldhagen and Spielberg Lies” to many individuals in Germany. In April 2000 a Netherlands court ordered V. to stop distributing the VHO booklet on the Anne Frank diary.

In May 2001 the Belgian Minister for Culture, Bert Anciaux, demanded that all Belgian libraries should remove from their shelves the works by V. Accordingly, his writings were removed from libraries and destroyed. On September 9, 2003, a court in Antwerp, Belgium, sentenced him, and his brother, to one year prison sentences, suspended, and to pay a fine of 2,500 euros. On November 27, 2004, V. was arrested at his residence in the Flemish town of Kortrijk. In April 2005 a Belgian Appeals court sentenced V. to one year in prison and fined him 2,500 euros. On August 3, 2005, he was again arrested, this time at Schiphol Airport in Amsterdam, on the basis of an international arrest warrant issued a year earlier in Germany. After being held for three months in the Netherlands, he was transferred to Germany. He was sentenced to 9 months in prison, and released on May 5th, 2006 on bail. In November 2006 V. was arrested again in his home town of Kortrijk, on the basis of an earlier Belgian court sentence, and thereafter was held in prison in Belgium. In June 2008 V. has been sentenced again to one year of prison together with the French Vincent Reynouart for denialism.

Anschrift von / Address of V.:  Siegfried Verbeke, P.O. Box 46, 2600 Berchem 1, Belgium 

Werke von / Works of V.: 

Literatur über / Writings concerning V.: 

Literatur von und über Siegfried Verbeke im Katalog der Deutschen Nationalbibliothek / Writings of and about Siegfried Verbeke in the catalogue of Deutsche Nationalbibliothek 

Het "Dagboek" van Anne Frank : een kritische benadering / [Robert Faurisson ; Siegfried Verbeke]. Vrij Historisch Onderzoek
Verfasser: Faurisson, Robert ; Verbeke, Siegfried
Verleger: Antwerpen : Vrij Historisch Onderzoek
Erscheinungsjahr: 1991
Umfang/Format: 118 S. : Ill. ; 21 cm
Gesamttitel: Revisionistische bibliotheek ; nr. 4,1
ISBN: 90-73111-02-3 (falsche ISBN)
Einband/Preis: kart.
Schlagwörter: Frank, Anne / Het achterhuis ; Textkritik
16.5p; XA-DE; XA-NL
Frank, Anne ; Tagebuch 1942-1944
16.5p; XA-DE; XA-NL
Amsterdam ; Judenverfolgung ; Geschichte 1942-1944 ; Erlebnisbericht
16.5; XA-DE; XY; XA-NL
Sachgruppe: 63 Geschichte und Historische Hilfswissenschaften

Letzte Änderung / Last update: 21.06.2011 

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