Ursula Haverbeck, dubbed the "Nazi Grandma," failed to turn up to begin her jail term last week but has been tracked down by police and taken to prison. She had been convicted on eight counts of incitement.
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Authorities in western Germany arrested serial Holocaust denier Ursula Haverbeck on Monday after the 89-year-old failed to show up at prison last week to start her sentence.
"After the convict failed to report to the relevant penal institution within the deadline, prosecutors in Verden on May 4, 2018 issued an order to execute the sentence and have charged police with its implementation," prosecutors said. Police found Haverbeck at her home on Monday and transferred her to prison to begin her two-year term.
Haverbeck was sentenced for incitement by denying the mass murder of millions of Jews during the Nazi era in Germany.
Haverbeck, who German media often refers to as the "Nazi Grandma," has never spent time in prison despite several previous convictions for denying the Holocaust, in which six million Jews were murdered by the Nazis between 1941 and 1945.
She was supposed to start her prison sentence in the town of Bielefeld last Wednesday.
'Looking for her'
The International Auschwitz Committee had said on Sunday it hoped Ursula Haverbeck would soon be in prison.
"One can only hope that the judiciary and police are urgently looking for her," said Christoph Heubner, the executive vice-president of the International Auschwitz Committee.
German newspaper Westfalen-Blatt reported that Haverbeck's home in Vlotho in central Germany seemed empty for days with mail piling up in front of the door but on Monday, police found her there.
International Holocaust Remembrance Day is January 27. Numerous memorials across Germany ensure the millions of victims are not forgotten.
Image: picture-alliance/AP Photo/M. Schreiber
Dachau Concentration Camp Memorial Site
A large sculpture stands in front of Dachau. Located just outside Munich, it was the first concentration camp opened by the Nazi regime. Just a few weeks after Adolf Hitler came to power, it was used by the paramilitary SS Schutzstaffel to imprison, torture and kill political opponents of the regime. Dachau also served as a prototype and model for the other Nazi camps that followed.
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Wannsee House
The villa on Berlin's Wannsee lake was pivotal in the planning of the Holocaust. Fifteen members of the Nazi government and the SS Schutzstaffel met here on January 20, 1942 to devise what became known as the "Final Solution," the deportation and extermination of all Jews in German-occupied territory. In 1992, the villa where the Wannsee Conference was held was turned into a memorial and museum.
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Holocaust Memorial in Berlin
Located next to the Brandenburg Gate, Berlin's Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe was inaugurated 60 years after the end of World War II on May 10, 2005, and opened to the public two days later. Architect Peter Eisenman created a field with 2,711 concrete slabs. An attached underground "Place of Information" holds the names of all known Jewish Holocaust victims.
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Memorial to Persecuted Homosexuals
Not too far from the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, another concrete memorial honors the thousands of homosexuals persecuted by the Nazis between 1933 and 1945. The 4-meter high (13-foot) monument, which has a window showing alternately a film of two men or two women kissing, was inaugurated in Berlin's Tiergarten on May 27, 2008.
Image: picture alliance/Markus C. Hurek
Documentation center on Nazi Party rally grounds
Nuremberg hosted the biggest Nazi party propaganda rallies from 1933 until the start of World War II. The annual Nazi Party congress, as well as rallies with as many as 200,000 participants, took place on the 11-square-kilometer (4.25-square-mile) area. Today, the unfinished Congress Hall building serves as a documentation center and a museum.
Image: picture-alliance/Daniel Karmann
German Resistance Memorial Center
The Bendlerblock building in Berlin was the headquarters of a military resistance group. On July 20, 1944, a group of Wehrmacht officers around Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg carried out an assassination attempt on Hitler that ultimately failed. The leaders of the conspiracy were summarily shot the same night in the courtyard of the Bendlerblock. Today, it's the German Resistance Memorial Center.
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Bergen-Belsen Memorial
The Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in Lower Saxony was initially established as a prisoner of war camp before becoming a concentration camp. Prisoners too sick to work were brought here from other concentration camps, and many also died of disease. One of the 50,000 people killed here was Anne Frank, a Jewish girl who gained international fame after her diary was published posthumously.
Image: picture alliance/Klaus Nowottnick
Buchenwald Memorial
Located near the Thuringian town of Weimar, Buchenwald was one of the largest concentration camps in Germany. From 1937 to April 1945, the National Socialists deported about 270,000 people from all over Europe to the camp and murdered 64,000 of them before the camp was liberated by US soldiers in 1945. The site now serves as a memorial to the victims.
Image: Getty Images/J. Schlueter
Memorial to the Sinti and Roma Victims
Opposite the Reichstag parliament building in Berlin, a park inaugurated in 2012 serves as a memorial to the 500,000 Sinti and Roma people killed by the Nazi regime. Around a memorial pool, the poem "Auschwitz" by Roma poet Santino Spinelli is written in English, Germany and Romani. "Gaunt face, dead eyes, cold lips, quiet, a broken heart, out of breath, without words, no tears," it reads.
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'Stolpersteine' — stumbling blocks as memorials
In the 1990s, artist Gunter Demnig began the project to confront Germany's Nazi past. The brass-covered concrete cubes placed in front of the former homes of Nazi victims show their names, details about their deportation, and murder, if known. As of early 2022, some 100,000 "Stolpersteine" have been laid in over 25 countries across Europe. It's the world's largest decentralized Holocaust memorial.
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Brown House in Munich
Right next to the "Führerbau," where Adolf Hitler had his office in Munich, was the headquarters of the Nazi Party, called the Brown House. A white cube now occupies the place where it once stood. In it, the "Documentation Center for the History of National Socialism" opened on April 30, 2015, 70 years after the defeat of the Nazi regime.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/Sven Hoppe
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Serial Holocaust denier
During her trial, Haverbeck spoke of an "Auschwitz lie," claiming it was not an extermination camp, but merely a labor camp.
She and her late husband Werner Georg Haverbeck, who was an active member of the Nazi party, founded a right-wing education center called Collegium Humanum. The center was banned in 2008.
Haverbeck also wrote for the right-wing magazine Stimme des Reiches (Voice of the Empire). She used the magazine to express her views that the Holocaust never took place.
Under German law, denying the Holocaust constitutes incitement to hatred and can carry a prison sentence of up to five years.