'Nazi Grandma' loses appeal case, sentenced to 14 months in prison for Holocaust denial

A German court in Detmold has sentenced Holocaust denier Ursula Haverbeck to 14 months in prison, after the 89-year-old woman lost her appeal to a prior conviction on Tuesday. However, four months were shaved off her original conviction of 18 months. Prosecutors wanted the sentence upheld, Haverbeck's lawyers were seeking exoneration.

The Detmold court had initially sentenced Haverbeck to eight months imprisonment in September 2016, after she sent a letter to the town's mayor, Rainer Heller, claiming that Auschwitz was not a concentration camp.

Read more: Holocaust deniers: Negating history

Following the trial, the octogenarian handed out pamphlets to journalists, as well as the judge and prosecutor, entitled "Only the truth will set you free," in which she once again denied the Nazi atrocities. Haverbeck was handed an additional 10-month sentence for the stunt.

'Never Again': Memorials of terror Wannsee House The villa on Berlin's Wannsee lake was pivotal in planning the Holocaust. 15 members of the Nazi government and the SS Schutzstaffel met here on January 20, 1942 to plan 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.

'Never Again': Memorials of terror Dachau The Nazi regime opened the first concentration camp in Dauchau not far from Munich. 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 to the regime. Dachau also served as a prototype and model for the other Nazi camps that followed.

'Never Again': Memorials of terror Nazi party rally grounds Nuremberg hosted the biggest Nazi party propaganda rallies from 1933 until the start of the Second World War. The annual Nazi party congress as well as rallies with as many as 200,000 participants took place on the 11-km² (4.25 square miles) area. Today, the unfinished Congress Hall building serves as a documentation center and a museum.

'Never Again': Memorials of terror Bergen-Belsen 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, so many also died of disease. One of the 50,000 killed here was Anne Frank, a Jewish girl who gained international fame posthumously after her diary was published.

'Never Again': Memorials of terror Memorial to the German Resistance 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 Adolf Hitler that failed. The leaders of the conspiracy were summarily shot the same night in the courtyard of the Bendlerblock, which is today the German Resistance Memorial Center.

'Never Again': Memorials of terror Hadamar Euthanasia Center From 1941 people with physical and mental disabilities were killed at a psychiatric hospital in Hadamar in Hesse. Declared "undesirables" by the Nazis, some 15,000 people were murdered here by asphyxiation with carbon monoxide or by being injected with lethal drug overdoses. Across Germany some 70,000 were killed as part of the Nazi-euthanasia program. Today Hadamar is a memorial to those victims.

'Never Again': Memorials of terror Holocaust Memorial Located next to the Brandenburg Gate, Berlin's Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe was inaugurated sixty 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.

'Never Again': Memorials of terror 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 four-meter high 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.

'Never Again': Memorials of terror Sinti and Roma Memorial 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."

'Never Again': Memorials of terror 'Stolpersteine' - stumbling blocks as memorials In the 1990s, the artist Gunther Demnig began a project to confront Germany's Nazi past. Brass-covered concrete cubes were placed in front of the former houses of Nazi victims, providing details on the person as well as the dates of deportation and death, if known. More than 45,000 "Stolpersteine" have been laid in 18 countries in Europe - it's the world's largest decentralized Holocaust memorial.

'Never Again': Memorials of terror Brown House in Munich Right next to the "Führerbau" where Adolf Hitler had his office, the headquarters of the Nazi Party in Germany were based in the "Brown House" in Munich. A white cube now occupies its former location. A new "Documentation Center for the History of National Socialism" opened on April 30, 2015, 70 years after the liberation of the Nazi regime, uncovering further dark chapters of history. Author: Max Zander, Ille Simon

Under German law, denying the Holocaust — in which 6 million Jews were murdered by the Nazis between 1941 and 1945 — constitutes incitement of racial hatred and can carry a prison sentence of up to five years.

Haverbeck and her late husband Werner Georg Haverbeck, who was an active member of the Nazi party in the run-up to and during the Second World War, founded a right-wing education center called Collegium Humanum, which has been banned since 2008. She has also written for the right-wing magazine Stimme des Reiches (Voice of the Empire), which she also used to express her views that the Holocaust never took place.

Haverbeck, from the German town of Vlotho near Bielefeld, has been sentenced for similar charges on five other occasions. The most recent, in October, saw her sentenced to six months in prison by a district court in Berlin for incitement of racial hatred after she claimed at a public event that the gas chambers and Auschwitz concentration camp "were not real."

In August she was handed a two-year sentence by a regional court in Lower Saxony.

Haverbeck has appealed the rulings passed down against her and proceedings in each other case remains ongoing. Haverbeck claims she has been merely been repeating an opinion.

This Tuesday's appeal verdict is not final, either. Haverbeck's lawyers intend to take the case to the Higher Regional Court in the town of Hamm, their last chance to challenge the sentence.

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