Judge bans Toben from Courage To Care event
PLANS by Holocaust denier Fredrick Toben to attend a Courage To Care meeting between Shoah survivors and students at Horsham in north-western Victoria have been thwarted by a Federal Court order.
PETER KOHN
PLANS by Holocaust denier Fredrick Toben to attend a Courage To Care meeting between Shoah survivors and students at Horsham in north-western Victoria have been thwarted by a Federal Court order.
Justice Anthony Besanko late last week banned Toben from attending the event and removed a variation that had relaxed his bail conditions on compassionate grounds.
“I don’t consider it appropriate that that liberty be exercised for the purpose of attending the exhibition,” Justice Besanko ruled, barring Toben from attending the Horsham event and any similar meetings.
The Holocaust denier had earlier issued a media release indicating he planned to attend the Courage To Care event this week to meet with Harry Better, a Holocaust survivor, after media coverage of Mr Better’s visit to Horsham for a Courage To Care preparatory meeting six weeks ago.
Toben is on bail as he waits for his appeal to be heard by the Federal Court on August 13 after being convicted of contempt of court and sentenced to three months’ jail.
Justice Besanko ruled on May 13 that Toben’s continual publication of Holocaust denial material on his Adelaide Institute website violated a 2002 Federal Court order.
Former Executive Council of Australian Jewry president Jeremy Jones, who brought the contempt action against Toben, asked the court to tighten his bail conditions.
Robin Margo SC, who represents Jones, said his client would not have agreed to a relaxation of bail if he had known Toben intended to use it to attend activities by Holocaust survivors.
But Dr Tony Weldon, who chairs Courage To Care Victoria, said he would not have been particularly concerned if Toben had appeared at the Horsham event, at which Mr Better and another survivor, Peter Gaspar, related to local school students how they were hidden from the Nazis by non-Jewish friends.
Dr Weldon said the exhibition was open to the public and Toben was a member of the public. “From my point of view, it didn’t disturb me if he wanted to sit and listen to a few speeches,” he told The AJN.
Police had been alerted to the possibility that Toben might be attending, in case any confrontation developed. Toben reportedly attended a Courage To Care exhibition in Canberra previously.
More than 1500 Wimmera-region secondary students will hear the experiences of nine survivors during the two-week Horsham event, which was opened by former Victoria Police commissioner Christine Nixon this week.
Carly Jenkins, a music student at Horsham College, sang Yerushalayim Shel Zachar (Jerusalem of Gold) at the opening, and Courage To Care conferred its Local Hero award on taxi driver Ken Ballinger who rescued a bushfire victim last summer.
Courage To Care organises around four of these events in metropolitan and regional areas each year.
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