BNP Councillor: "about 300,000 people died in the Jewish Holocaust"

On 5 May, the Nothing British About the BNP group revealed this ugly photograph, showing Stoke on Trent's first BNP councillor, Steve Batkin, posing in front a war memorial. 

Batkin is on the far right of the photograph. (Any pun here is entirely accidental. Besides, you can see in the photograph that from Batkin's perspective, the three men with stiff arms are all to his right.)

Now, local Stoke on Trent news blog, Pits n Pots has interviewed Batkin about the photograph and also about his views on the Holocaust. The interview may be read in full here and a very easy to use audio link is given at the foot of the article. On the photograph, he had this to say: 

The people in the Photograph, although they are genuine patriotic people, I believe their strategy is wrong...It was a risk, which has certainly backfired on me

Batkin assured his interviewer that he didn't think the men in the photo saw it as a Nazi salute, but rather a "Fascist salute". He also had the political insight to accept that people "won't be very happy about it".

When asked if he was a Holocaust denier, Batkin showed rather less political insight. (The audio for this is at the very end of Part 2.)

I've always believed about 300,000 people died in the Jewish Holocaust, not 6 million

The interviewer very calmly asks Batkin what he bases this upon. (The audio for this is at the very beginning of Part 3.) Batkin replies

I have read quite a lot about European history, about the second world war, and although I realise a lot of Jews died, in my opinion there's no way there was that many Jews in Europe at that point in time which could have possibly sustained that amount of deaths

Batkin serves as a School Governor in two Stoke on Trent Schools, Edensor Technical College and Mitchel High School. Perhaps he can arrange to attend some history classes.