Controversial: Holocaust denier David Irving is to lead a tour of Nazi sites in Poland next month despite widespread opposition

Holocaust-denying historian David Irving has sparked widespread fury by organising 'disgusting' tours of concentration camps costing £2,000 for each participant.

The disgraced academic, who is a self-confessed fascist, is leading a tour group to sites in Poland such as Treblinka, Sobibor and Hitler's 'Wolf's Lair' headquarters.

Holocaust memorial groups have accused Irving of insulting the memory of those killed in the Second World War by spreading 'pro-Nazi propaganda' on the tours.

And a leading historian claims that the holidays are marketed towards other Holocaust deniers - adding that it 'surely cannot be right' for Irving to be allowed to market them.

Irving, 77, is notorious for his attempts to play down the extent of the Holocaust, and his insistence that Hitler was unaware of the plan to exterminate the Jews.

He was publicly exposed after his failed bid to sue author Deborah Lipstadt for calling him a Holocaust denier, prompting a trial in which his revisionist views were laid bare.

Next month, Irving is to take a group of 'international guests' to Latvia and Poland, where they will visit four concentration camps as well as the fortress built to be Hitler's headquarters on the Eastern Front.

The nine-day tour, which starts and ends in Warsaw, will stop at Treblinka, Sobibor, Belzec and Majdanek, as well the ruined 'Wolf's Lair' near the town of Ketrzyn.

The all-inclusive tour costs $2,900 (£1,850) per person, plus an extra $300 for a two-day stay in Riga, the capital of Latvia, before the main trip.

In promotional material, Irving promises customers the opportunity to 'make up your own mind about the truth' during 'the unforgettable journey of a lifetime'.

Outrage: Irving, pictured on a previous tour to Himmler's headquarters at Hochwald, has sparked fury with his plans for a 'historical' tour

Leaflet: Irving posted this document online to promote the forthcoming tour of Poland

After a trip to the Wolf's Lair and Heinrich Himmler's headquarters, Irving will deliver a lecture on Himmler, the leader of the SS, about whom he is writing a book.

The advertisement also advertises a trip to Treblinka, saying: 'Forget the phoney allures, mass-tourism and "reconstructions" of modern-day Auschwitz - the erstwhile slave-labour camp turned into a tourist attraction, complete with hot-dog vendors and souvenir stands!'

Irving does not deny that hundreds of thousands of people - nearly all of them Jewish - were killed at Treblinka, but in a video filmed on a previous trip to the camp he appeared to downplay its horrors.

In the clip, he implied that he would rather be murdered in 'this beautiful forest setting, with birds twittering' than at 'the wall of the Communist Party headquarters in Budapest in 1956'.

Multiple charities told MailOnline that Irving should be banned from leading his tour holidays, accusing him of 'insulting the memory of Holocaust victims and survivors'.

Discredited: Irving's tours have attracted anger from charities that he is profiting from concentration camps

Fascination: Irving at the Wolf's Lair, which was intended to be Hitler's headquarters on the Eastern Front

'This discredited and repellent figure must not be allowed to organising these tours in Poland,' a spokesman for the Campaign Against Antisemitism said.

'He has already been banned from attending certain sites connected to the Holocaust. Many continental countries where the Holocaust took place have laws limiting hate speech.

FROM SERIOUS HISTORIAN TO DISGRACED HOLOCAUST DENIER David Irving was born in 1938 in Essex, and was educated at Brentwood public school before going on to Imperial and UCL, although he did not complete a degree. At the start of his career he was seen as a serious historian of Nazi Germany - his first book, The Destruction of Dresden, was generally well regarded on its release in 1963. However, in subsequent decades Irving's revisionist views and fascist political beliefs started to emerge, partly thanks to a book in which he argued that Hitler had no knowledge of the Holocaust. During the 1980s, the author attempted to unite Britain's fascist political parties into a single grouping, called Focus, and admitted having links with the National Front. Irving's neo-Nazi views were very publicly exposed in 1996 when he sued Deborah Lipstadt and Penguin Books for calling him a Holocaust denier, leading to a £2million High Court case which he lost. Mr Justice Gray accused him of distorting the truth, and concluded: 'No objective, fair-minded historian would have serious cause to doubt that there were gas chambers at Auschwitz.' The judge also found 'that he is an active Holocaust denier, that he is anti-semitic and racist, and that he associates with Right-wing extremists who promote neo-Nazism'. In 2006, Irving was sentenced to three years in an Austrian prison after being convicted of Holocaust denial, which is a crime in some countries formerly ruled by the Nazis. Since being disgraced, he has continued to write and deliver lectures - often to far-Right groups - but his work is not taken seriously by any mainstream historian. He now claims to accept that 'millions of Jews' were killed by the Nazis, but still doubts the authenticity of the Auschwitz gas chambers and rails against Jews on his website. Advertisement

'We question whether the Polish authorities are applying their own laws to their fullest extent if they allow Irving to go ahead with this tour.'

Karen Pollock, chief executive of the Holocaust Educational Trust, said: 'David Irving is a proven Holocaust denier. His forthcoming "tour" can serve no purpose other than to insult the memory of Holocaust victims and survivors.'

The Never Again Association, which led a successful campaign to have Irving banned from the Warsaw Book Fair in 2007, accused him of trying to 'whitewash Nazi crimes' with his 'shameful' revisionism.

A spokesman said: 'We think his pro-Nazi propaganda must be exposed and opposed whenever possible.'

The Anti-Defamation League added: 'Irving has made a career out of charging people money to listen to his pseudo-historical fantasies.

'This latest excursion led by Irving to the sites where millions of Jews and others were systematically murdered is another disgusting example of his appalling desecration of the memory of those who perished at the hands of the Nazis.'

Sir Richard J. Evans, the Cambridge professor considered the world's leading expert on the Third Reich, compared Irving to two British teenagers who were recently caught trying to steal objects from Auschwitz on a school trip.

'They were roundly condemned in the British press for the lack of respect they showed to the victims of the Nazi genocide carried out there,' Sir Richard told MailOnline.

'Mr Irving shows infinitely less respect, yet he is allowed to conduct these tours without hindrance. That surely cannot be right.'

He added: 'Those who go on these tours are almost without exception people already sympathisers of, or believers in, Holocaust denial, so I do not think the tours will help Mr Irving convert anyone to his views.

'However, I do not think it is appropriate for tours of these places to be conducted by someone who does not accept the overwhelming historical evidence that they were the sites of mass extermination carried out by the Nazis.'

Irving first aroused fury with his tours of Nazi-occupied Poland in 2010, when the country's Jewish community reacted with anger at the prospect of him profiting from the death camps.

However, despite the uproar he has continued to lead the tours, albeit with a lower profile, and has now visited the camps at least seven times.

Grim: The Treblinka concentration camp, where nearly a million people were killed, is on Irving's itinerary

Irving told MailOnline: 'I first visited the sites privately, including Auschwitz, in the company of a Briton (who lived in Poland) who is a real expert on them.

'After that I organised international tours of groups from all over the world to the sites - this year will be the seventh, I think.'

Asked about his reaction to the criticism, he said: 'I urge you not to listen to closely these Schmierfinken [a German word meaning "hacks"]. What do they know? Have they ever taken the trouble to visit these sites?'

Irving is careful in his public statements not to deny that the grim nature of the concentration camps, despite his reputation.