VIn his commentary in Haaretz ("Denial is not a reason for arrest," Feb. 26), Gideon Levy severely criticized the fact that British author David Irving was recently put on trial in Austria for having called Auschwitz "a legend" during two lectures in 1989. Levy regards the verdict against Irving as an illegitimate restriction of free speech and calls it an irony of history that it is precisely Austria , with its highly problematic relationship toward its own National Socialist past, which is trying to please others by playing the role of a perfect anti-fascist nation.

We agree with many of Levy's critical points: Austria 's way of dealing with its own Nazi past has been characterized since 1945 by repression and denial, by mendacity and contradiction - until today. The treatment of the surviving victims of the Nazis by official Austria was and is too often simply shameful. For the last 20 years, Joerg Haider's Freedom Party - a political movement whose main agenda has consisted of racist hatred against immigrants, and periodical attempts to relate Nazi crimes and immanent anti-Semitism - has been successful.

We also share Levy's supposition that Irving was not only just by chance put on trial at a time when Austria is in charge of the EU presidency: A government like the current one, a cooperation of former right extremists and Catholic conservatives, has simply a well-founded interest, for reasons of image, to prove its good will and efforts to come to terms with history. What a lucky coincidence that the occasion for setting a warning example involved not the owner of an Austrian passport, but of a British one.

Irving came to Austria in November 2005, was arrested and already three months later put on trial on the basis of the so-called "law of prohibition." He was accused of having denied Nazi crimes 16 years ago. The verdict was quite harsh: three years in jail.

At the same time, a man called Milivoj Asner has been living life as a free man for decades. While Asner has denied committing crimes during World War II, he is most certainly guilty: A Croatian collaborator at the time, he participated actively in the deportation and killing of Jews and Serbs in the Balkans. And he is still living comfortably - nowadays as an Austrian citizen - and has not been insulted by any Austrian court in the city of Klagenfurt , where he lives, although the legal establishment knows his biography. Here, no doubt, the constitutional state of Austria measures things in different units. There is no question that the policies of official Austria in relation to contemporary history are hypocritical and always were.

Nevertheless, we regard it as a severe mistake to conclude from all these facts, like Levy does, that the prohibition against belittlement and denial of Nazi crimes as such is an inadmissible limitation of free speech. Levy's argument refers to Anglo-Saxon discourse, which claims the primacy of free speech. He points out that it is not reasonable that the denial of mass crimes such as those in Rwanda , Congo or Turkey , is not prohibited by law, while the negation of the Holocaust is. In fact, the international community should ask itself why one genocide attracts so much attention and others do not. But we as Austrians must not do so. We have other questions to deal with.

Nowhere else before the outbreak of World War II did pogroms take place that were comparable to those in Austria after the invasion of German troops in 1938. In Austria , Hitler, Eichmann, Kaltenbrunner, Stangl and others learned that the country molded them and they molded the country.

Because the Republic of Austria thought of itself, from the beginning, as the antithesis of National Socialism, one can hardly criticize the fact that this official self-understanding was cast in written law. After 1945, similar laws were enacted in Austria and Germany as a historical consequence of the rise of National Socialism. These laws should guarantee that anti-Democrats are not protected by democratic rights of freedom and equality in trying to get rid of the same. The extenuation of Nazi crimes must not be accepted. Historical consciousness shall not be manipulated in a way that promotes National Socialist tendencies from gaining strength again.

By the way, Austrian law is a lot more progressive than German law, because any limitation of free speech solely concerns anti-Democrats - not people or movements that call for an extension of the current democratic, organized sphere.

Of course we leave it to Levy to decide whether to regard as politically obscure those who still insist on maintaining this special restriction of free speech. But it should be mentioned that most of the people who take his view here in Austria belong politically to the far right - at the least. Those who get into conflicts with the "law of prohibition" are not just some weird characters with bizarre fantasies. To give an actual example: An Austrian parliamentarian is due soon to explain in court his denial of the existence of gas chambers. Also the argument that because Austria has dealt very hypocritically with its past, its few anti-fascist achievements are worthless as well, fails the moment it comes to real politics.

Finally, Levy's argument completely misses the point when he compares the Holocaust with other genocides: These enormous crimes will hopefully form the historical consciousness of the societies that permitted them to happen and will feel guilty because of them. Our historical and political consciousness as Austrians is influenced by the crimes committed in our midst.

We have drawn at least two conclusions from these crimes: We have learned that the limits of what can be said constitute the borders of what can be done in a substantial way. And we have understood that democracy has to defend itself against its enemies. The restriction of free speech has to a ppear as a quiet, moderate measure to us - as compared to what the Nazis foresaw for their enemies.

We might conclude our argument with an alpine metaphor borrowed from Erich Kastner, whose books were burned by the Nazis: "One must not wait until the snowball becomes an avalanche. One has to trample down the rolling snowball. The avalanche cannot be stopped any more."

Walter Manoschek is professor of political science at the University of Vienna . Florian Wenninger did his national service at Yad Vashem in 1998/99, and currently studies in Vienna.

Haaretz, 9.03.06