A 42-year-old German deported from the United States went on trial Tuesday on allegations of Holocaust denial.

Germar Rudolf, who published a study claiming to prove that the Nazis did not gas Jews at the Auschwitz concentration camp, faces a possible five-year prison sentence if convicted.

In his opening statement, prosecutor Andreas Grossmann said Rudolf used the Internet to spread documents attacking historical truths.

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"He represented the Holocaust as invention," Grossmann said.

Rudolf was sentenced in 1995 in Germany to 14 months in prison for Holocaust denial, but then disappeared. He applied for political asylum in the United States in 2000, but was rejected and was deported last year to serve the 1995 sentence.

He was arrested when he appeared at an immigration office in Chicago to apply for a green card based on his marriage to a U.S. citizen.

Rudolf is being tried in the same state court in Mannheim that is currently hearing a similar but unrelated case against Ernst Zundel, a German deported from Canada last year.

The Rudolf trial is expected to last until at least the end of January.