Holocaust Denier Ordered To Visit Memorial

A convicted Holocaust denier has been ordered to visit Hungary's holocaust memorial centre, Auschwitz death camp or the Yad Vashem memorial in Israel.

Gyorgy Nagy, who was also given an 18-month suspended jail sentence, will have to write down his thoughts about the experience in order to complete his sentence, the court said.

If he chooses the Budapest Holocaust Memorial Centre he will have to make three visits.

The 42-year-old unemployed computer technician was arrested during a political rally in Budapest in 2011 after holding up a banner reading: "The Shoah did not happen".

Shoah is a Hebrew word meaning "catastrophe" which is used to refer to the genocide to the Jews during the Second World War.

Nagy was the first person to be convicted under a law passed in February 2010 that made the denial of genocide committed by the Nazi regime a crime punishable by a maximum three-year prison sentence.

He is also banned from attending political rallies or events.

Hungary's attitude to the Holocaust has been criticised by some since Prime Minister Viktor Orban took power amid renewed tributes to Hungary's wartime leader Miklos Horthy, an ally of Adolf Hitler, and the rehabilitation of some anti-Semitic writers.

In 2012, Nobel peace laureate and Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel returned Hungary's highest state honour because of what he called a "whitewashing" of history in the European Union member state.