UK Labour expels Holocaust denier Chris Crookes 18 months into suspension
The UK Labour Party has been holding an investigation for the past few months into the rising antisemitism within the party.
By TAMAR URIEL-BEERIBritain's opposition Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn leaves his home in London, Britain earlier this month(photo credit: PETER NICHOLLS/REUTERS)
The UK Labour Party expelled Holocaust denier Chris Crookes from the international sect of the party for members living abroad on Tuesday after a year and a half of suspension.Crookes suggested that inmates at Auschwitz could go swimming and raise complaints to the commandant, according to the Jewish Chronicle. He wrote an article in 2012 titled, "The Human Face of Holocaust Revisionism," where he mentioned the pool concept and claimed that no infants died in Auschwitz.There, he claimed that the commander of the camp, Rudolf Hoss, "had a standing order that any inmate could approach him personally to register a complaint about other inmates... or even guards."Crookes further called the Holocaust a "mythology," presenting it as a cultural tale that is not to be questioned and that "demonizes the Germans unfairly."The Labour Party has had an ongoing investigation for months with the goal of looking into and ending the roots of antisemitism within the party. Its leader, Jeremy Corbyn, has been affiliated in the past with antisemitic and anti-Israel people and groups, and even laid a wreath for the murderer of the Israeli Olympic Team of 1972.The party has been trying to quiet the complaints of antisemitism, however. They even opened a website in recent months about combatting antisemitism.Another Labour member, Jackie Walker, was expelled in March for saying that "many Jews were the chief financiers of the sugar and slave trade."A 200-page report by researcher David Collier speculated that Jeremy Corbyn "radicalized" Labour Party members and managed to force a sort of obsession with Israel unto them.
