An 81-year-old German woman was convicted in Munich of Holocaust denial.

The woman, identified as Ursula H., was given a suspended sentence of six months and must also pay a nearly $1,400 fine, Munich Judge Norbert Riedmann decided Wednesday.

Former president of a banned right-wing extremist group, Ursula Haverbeck-Wetzel, admitted that she had distributed a text among schoolchildren that she herself had written, in which she denied the Holocaust. According to the DPA German press agency, her 91-year-old co-defendant had allowed his name to be used on the pamphlet. He was fined more than $800.

Munich Judge Norbert Riedmann said he doubted Ursula H. would change her views, but that she had to be punished for expressing them. In Germany, it is illegal to openly deny the Holocaust or to disseminate Nazi propaganda. A jail sentence of up to five years is possible.

Some right-wing groups have tested the denial ban by openly doubting the numbers of Jews murdered, or by stating that German civilians suffered just as much as did the victims of the Holocaust.

In recent years, several notorious Holocaust deniers have been put on trial in Germany and Austria, and have served jail time. In March, Ernst Zuendel was released after serving three years of a five-year sentence in a Mannheim prison for inciting hatred against Jews, and systematically denying the Nazi genocide against the Jews. His attorney, Sylvia Stolz, denied the Holocaust herself during the trial and was sentence to three years and 8 months in jail in 2008.

This year, Austrian Holocaust denier Gerd Honsik was sentenced in an Austrian court to four years in jail for questioning the existence of gas chambers. Also in Austria, British author and Holocaust denier David Irving was jailed in 2006 for a 1989 speech in which he said there were no gas chambers at Auschwitz.

In 2007, Germar Rudolf was convicted and sentenced to 30 months in a Mannheim jail for Holocaust denial. In the courtroom, he referred to the Holocaust as a fraud.

via jta.org