Eric Stevick
CLEARVIEW — Protestors holding "No Nazis" and "Not in our town" signs demonstrated outside the Clearview Community Center Sunday, where a controversial British author who has challenged the number and manner of Jewish concentration camp deaths during World War II was speaking.
In 2000, an American judge branded historian David Irving as an anti-Semite racist and an apologist for Hitler, ruling that an American scholar was justified in calling him a Holocaust denier.
Irving was originally scheduled to speak at a Marysville restaurant, but when the company’s owners discovered why he was there they canceled the engagement.
The speech was later moved to the Clearview Community Center.
Irving, 64, the author of nearly 30 books, including "Hitler’s War," has said he doesn’t deny that Jews were killed by the Nazis, but he challenges the number of dead and the manner in which they died.
Kinuko Noborikawa, co-chairwoman of the Human Rights Coalition for Snohomish County, said she took a photo of a poster of Adolf Hitler hanging over the community center sign when she first arrived. It was quickly removed.
As protesters began taking pictures, including license plates, some of those attending decided to leave.
Noborikawa said she hopes the group sent a message that "we just don’t want to see this type of thing going on in our community."
Area residents later joined the protesters from the human rights group in their demonstration.
Also outside was Kari Averill, a history teacher at Cascade High School in Everett. Averill teaches a class on the Holocaust. What frightens Averill is that some people will believe just about anything they read.
"I was surprised to hear that Irving himself was here, but I am very aware that there is a white supremacist movement in our community," she said.
"I am not sure how anybody could believe what he is saying," Averill said. "It’s such patent lies. It flies in the fact of all the evidence that is out there."
The demonstration was peaceful, said Jan Jorgensen, a spokeswoman for the Snohomish County Sheriff’s Office, which had deputies on hand to monitor the situation.
You can call Herald Writer Eric Stevick at 425-339-3446
or send e-mail to stevick@heraldnet.com.
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