'Nazi gran' who went on the run to avoid jail for Holocaust denial dies aged 96

Ursula Haverbeck married a former SS official in 1970, and spent several decades running a "Holocaust research centre" that created material German judges branded "poison"

A neo-Nazi gran who evaded police for years while being sought on hate crime charges has died aged 96.

Right-wing extremist groups confirmed that Ursula Haverbeck, a noted German Holocaust denier who claimed Auschwitz, the largest murder site in human history, was nothing more than a "labour camp", died on Wednesday. Haverbeck had been jailed multiple times and was hailed as a martyr by neo-Nazis after publicly denying the murders of millions of Jews.

She once appeared on television and sensationally claimed that "the Holocaust is the biggest and most sustainable lie in history". Haverbeck had been convicted multiple times since 2004 and was locked up in 2017 and 2020, earning one conviction from a Berlin judge in 2022 for repeatedly publicly denying Adolf Hitler's Nazi party ever carried out the genocide of six million Jewish Germans.

She was most recently convicted in June this year for incitement, and sentenced to 16 months behind bars by the Hamburg state court. The 96-year-old died before her appeal against the guilty verdict - issued for further comments about Auschwitz - was completed.

Denying the Holocaust is a criminal offence in Germany that carries a maximum prison sentence of five years, a punishment Haverbeck attempted to escape in 2018. She failed to turn up to prison in Verden, west Germany, in May 2018 following an earlier conviction, sparking a week-long police manhunt.

She was ultimately found by police when she relented and returned to her home, and her multiple arrests have given her superstar status among extremist right-wing circles, who first reported her death on X, formerly Twitter. The reports were later picked up by German channel N-TV.

Frank Franz, the chairman of extreme right-wing, neo-Nazi party Die Heimat, confirmed the group had "learned of her death today from her lawyer". Haverbeck had established herself in Nazi circles long before her notable public outbursts, having married Werner Georg Haverbeck, a former SS official, in 1970.

She spent the following several decades in charge of a "Holocaust research centre", and overseeing the publication of explicitly antisemitic and Holocaust-denying material. The centre was only shut down 16 years ago in 2008. The closure did not stop her from spreading hatred, and she quickly became a favourite amongst German neo-Nazi groups.

She even ran for the European Parliament in 2019, joining the Die Rechte (The Right) party ticket as a top candidate. One judge said during a previous conviction that she was spreading "poison" through Germany.

They said: "You're not a Holocaust researcher, you're a Holocaust denier and it's not knowledge you're spreading, it's poison. There's nothing that will stop you. We won't have any impact on you with words." One magistrate once said it was "deplorable" that Haverbeck used her energy "to spread such hair-raising nonsense."