A German court ruled on Wednesday that Ursula Haverbeck, otherwise known as the “Nazi grandma” will not receive an early release from her two-year prison sentence.

Haverback, a 91-year-old neo-Nazi is a Holocaust denier and has repeatedly claimed that Auschwitz was just a labor camp.

In 2017, a court in the town of Verden convicted her for incitement and she entered prison last year. Although she has served over two-thirds of her prison sentence and Germany regularly releases prisoners at that stage, the court decided against releasing her early. The court did not provide an explanation.

Holocaust denial has been illegal in Germany since 1985 and carries a prison sentence of up to five years. Nazi symbols, such as swastikas, are illegal as well.

Haverbeck was convicted previously several times but avoided prison by repeatedly filing appeals. She once claimed on television that “the Holocaust is the biggest and most sustained lie in history.”

Her original prison sentence was for only eight months in prison but was increased after she distributed a pamphlet at the trial entitled “Only the Truth Will Set You Free” to the judge, prosecutors and media reporters.

Her husband, Werner Georg Havebeck, was one of the Nazi Party’s top officials and was a student of Rudolf Hess. The Nazis’ defeat did nothing to cool his fervor for Nazi ideology and in 1963, he founded a neo-Nazi organization together with his wife.

Werner died in 1999 and his neo-Nazi organization was forced to close by German authorities in 2008 but Ursula faithfully continued his work.

(YWN Israel Desk – Jerusalem)