Navigate to News section

Irving Booked UES Catholic Center; Center Says Talk Is Cancelled

But Irving says it’ll go on

by
Ari M. Brostoff
November 13, 2009
Irving arriving at the Oxford Union in 2007.(Bruno Vincent/Getty Images)
Irving arriving at the Oxford Union in 2007.(Bruno Vincent/Getty Images)

Yesterday, we reported that Holocaust revisionist David Irving was scheduled to give a talk in New York City on Saturday, in a secret location that would be announced to registered audience members only at last minute. This afternoon, a group called New Yorkers Against David Irving announced that they’d discovered Irving’s planned venue: the Catholic Kolping Society on the Upper East Side, an outpost of a Catholic fraternal society based in Cologne, Germany. Irving booked the venue under a fake name, the anti-Irving group said, adding that after its members contacted the Society, the event was canceled. A receptionist at the Society house, who would not give his name, said that someone claiming to be named Michael Singer came to the house “a couple of days ago” to schedule a book reading for Saturday, but had not yet left a deposit when the Society started getting calls warning that the speaker was actually Irving.

Reached for comment, Irving confirmed that the talk was planned for the Kolping Society. “We have a valid contract, and we’re going to go ahead with that,” he said. “We’ll be there at 7 p.m.” When a similar situation occurred in Toronto, he said, “I turned up, and my entire audience turned up, and that was the end of that. I’m sure that the Kolping Society will see reason.” He said that the Society’s claim of canceling the event was a “smokescreen” and that he will still speak there—as, he added, he’d previously done, in 2004. A Society spokeswoman denied both those claims. “He has no contract at all,” she said. “There’s absolutely no contract. He cannot come in the building.”

UPDATE: New Jersey Residents Against David Irving, a counterpart to the New York anti-Irving group, has announced that an American Legion post in the town of Wayne has canceled a lecture Irving had been scheduled to give there tonight.

Ari M. Brostoff is Culture Editor at Jewish Currents.