Holocaust-Doubting Japanese Magazine Killed

TOKYO - One of Japan's best-known publishing companies, Bungei Shunju Ltd., said today it will shut down a magazine that printed an article claiming the gas chambers of Auschwitz never existed.

The article in the February issue of Marco Polo, a 200,000-circulation monthly magazine, has provoked growing protests from Jewish groups that called it an insult.

Tadashi Saito, a company spokesman, said Bungei Shunju will shut down Marco Polo and recall any copies of the February issue still in stores. Marco Polo editors will be transferred to other posts at the company, he said.

The article claimed the Holocaust was a "made-up story" because "the German government never once plotted or implemented the destruction of Jews."

It said the gas chambers at Auschwitz, where about 1.5 million Jews were killed, were communist fabrications and that Jews died there only because of illness.

"We regret that Marco Polo has printed an article about the Nazi slaughter of Jews that lacked accuracy and caused deep sadness and suffering to the Jewish community," Saito said in a written statement.

The article renewed questions about Japanese ignorance of the Holocaust and Jewish issues.

Books alleging Jewish conspiracies are frequently published and advertised in major newspapers, and many Japanese apparently don't consider them anti-Semitic.