The people who deny Holocaust

Sir: I am generally against censorship, but there are two aspects of the Holocaust controversy ("Blair may make denial of Holocaust an offence", 30 January) which need our attention.

The first is that not only do claims that such mass atrocities never occurred cruelly insult the memory of those who died, but the millions of bereaved relatives are publicly classed as liars.

The second point is that those who champion hatred of whole races find support and comfort.

When researching in the Johannesburg public library in the 1960s, I found that probably the first editor of any newspaper of any Allied nation to spread the calumny against the Holocaust victims was the editor of the official newspaper of the pro-apartheid Afrikaner Nationalist Party. The newspaper was Die Transvaler. The date was April 1945 - before the European war had even ended. The first Nazi death camps had recently been discovered. The editor claimed that they were fakes erected and filmed by Hollywood in order to "besmirch" the name of the German people.

That editor was Dr Hendrik Verwoerd, later to become South Africa's most racist Prime Minister, and the architect of the neo-Nazi apartheid policy.

LEN CLARKE

Uxbridge, Middlesex