Jewish groups have welcomed the decision by a German court to sentence the Australian revisionist historian, Fredrick Toben, to ten months in prison for inciting racial hatred and slander by denying that the Holocaust ever took place -- a crime under German law.

The German-born Toben, who was arrested in the western German town of Mannheim last April, used the Internet to publicise his ideas denying the killing of millions of jews by the Nazis during the second World War.

The Executive Council of Australian Jewry said that the conviction was encouraging not just to Holocaust survivors but to all people who defend democracy and tolerance.