Лев Гунин - ГУЛаг Палестины

University of Waterloo,

Waterloo, Ontario

Canada

The following is the full text of the article by Mr. Shallit that Mr.

Irving quotes in the preceding letter.

&&&&& LIES OF OUR TIMES

by Jeffrey Shallit

How the Words of the Holocaust Deniers and Their Allies

Show Them For What They Are

1. Background

Canada has a long tradition of tolerance and multiculturalism.

That's why many residents of the K-W area were shocked and

saddened to learn that a stereo store on King Street in

Kitchener was displaying posters advertising a talk by David

Irving, a self-described historian who says that the estimates

of six million Jews killed by the Nazis during World War II are

greatly exaggerated. Inside the store, according to the K-W

Record, one can find for sale a book by Fred Leuchter that

claims that the gas chambers at Auschwitz were never used

for mass killing. After local protests, the store owner retaliated

by putting up posters about the banking system based on the

writings of anti-Semite Eustace Mullins. Subsequently, these

posters were taken down by the store owner, but one explicitly

anti-Semitic flyer still remains. The Kitchener-Waterloo

Record recently carried a letter to the editor by Paul Fromm,

director of "Canadian Association for Free Expression, Inc.".

This letter defended neo-Nazi publisher Ernst Zundel, saying,

"Zundel was dragged through the courts for nine years ...

MERELY for his UNPOPULAR views." [emphasis mine]

Who are Michael Rothe, David Irving, Fred Leuchter, Eustace

Mullins, and Paul Fromm, and what do they stand for?

2. Michael Rothe

Michael Rothe is the owner of European Sound Imports, at

109 King Street W. in Kitchener. According to the K-W Record,

he is a native of southern Germany, who came to Canada

eight years ago. His stereo store might appear harmless on

the outside, but on the inside, one can obtain anti-Semitic

propaganda from a variety of sources. According to the

Record, in addition to the book by Fred Leuchter mentioned

above, one can also purchase a booklet on the court battles of

pro-Nazi publisher Ernst Zundel. Rothe also believes that the

Holocaust has been greatly exaggerated, and that there is a

world-wide Jewish conspiracy behind it. "They want money.

When they have money they have power," he has been

quoted as saying. Although Rothe has claimed, "I have not

seen a neo-Nazi before," according to the Record, he attended

a recent "victory party" for Ernst Zundel, and Zundel was

recently sighted at his store. When I asked Rothe if he knew

what Irving would speak on, he claimed, "Irving comes to

speak on Germany ... only Germany." When I pointed out that

this was false, that Irving actually spends a significant portion

of his speeches discussing how the Holocaust is a hoax, he

repeated, "No, that is wrong -- Irving only speaks about

Germany." However, the posters Rothe himself has put up

belie this claim--they list the Holocaust as a topic of Irving's

speech.

3. David Irving

David John Cawdell Irving is a British "historian", born in

1938.

According to David Cesarani of the Wiener Library in London,

England, he attended Imperial College at the University of

London, but never graduated. He holds no academic degree

and no academic position at any university or college.

He calls himself a "moderate fascist", and claims, among

other things that the gas chambers at Auschwitz (in which an

estimated 2-3 million people died) were "built by the Poles

after the war as a tourist attraction." (For this remark, he was

fined DM 10,000 by a Munich court in May 1992.

The judge was quoted as saying that the gas chambers of

Auschwitz were "an historically certain fact.")

Irving denies being a "Holocaust denier" or "Hitler apologist",

and seems willing to resort to legal action if necessary.

In a recent fax printed in the K-W Record, he is reported as

saying, "I have warned 22 British newspapers that I shall not

hesitate to commence libel action if they use smear phrases

such like 'Hitler apologist' or 'Holocaust denier' to embellish

their writings." But Bernard Levin, writing in The Times of

London in May of this year, quoted Irving as saying, "I hope

the court will fight a battle for the German people and put an

end to the blood lie of the Holocaust which has been told

against this country for 50 years." Irving first entered the

headlines in 1970.

In July of that year, he was forced to apologize in the High

Court of London for "making a wholly untrue and highly

damaging statement about a woman writer."--not an

auspicious start for someone who claims to be in pursuit of the

truth.

Later that year, Irving was back in the headlines, concerning

publication of his book, "The Destruction of Convoy PQ17".

Ostensibly an expose of an ill-fated 1942 Arctic convoy

headed for the Soviet Union during World War II, it eventually

resulted in Irving being fined 40,000 British pounds for libel.

Irving's book faulted Captain John Broome, commander of the

convoy at the time, saying he was guilty of "downright

disobedience" and "downright desertion of the convoy."

Broome brought suit against Irving for false statements, and

won a judgment in August of 1970.

Irving's lawyers appealed, and lost in March, 1971.

The case is revealing because of what it says about Irving's

abilities as a historian and his motives as an author.

According to the Times of London, Irving showed a copy of the

manuscript to Broome before publication. Broome objected to

the accuracy of some thirty passages in the book, and

threatened to sue for libel if Irving did not make changes.

At that point, William Kimbers Ltd., Irving's publisher, notified

him that they would not publish the book as it was then

written. Later, Irving published the book with another

publisher.

The court found that Irving "was warned from most

responsible quarters that his book contained libels on Captain

Broome ... To make [the book] a success he was ready to risk

libel actions ... Documentary evidence .... showed that [Irving]

had deliberately set out to attack Captain Broome and in spite

of the most explicit warnings persisted in his attack because it

would help sell the book." The court labeled Irving's conduct

as "outrageous and shocking."

Irving's misrepresentations did not end with the publication of

his book.

According to Cesarani, in 1979, a German publisher had to

pay compensation to the father of Anne Frank after printing the

German edition of Irving's book, Hitler's War.

Irving had claimed that Anne Frank's diary was a forgery.

Irving claims that according to his "research", the Holocaust is

greatly exaggerated.

(He was recently quoted in the K-W Record as saying that the

number of Jews who died in concentration camps was "of the

order of 100,000 or more.") But during the 1988 trial of

pro-Nazi publisher Ernst Zundel, he was forced to admit under

cross-examination that he hadn't even read all of Eichmann's

1960 trial testimony.

(In this testimony, Eichmann admitted that Nazi leaders

discussed the so-called "Final Solution to the Jewish

problem''-- extermination, in 1942.) In November 1991, a

reporter from the Independent showed that Irving omitted

crucial lines from a translation of Goebbels' diaries -- lines that

would have contradicted his theory that Hitler knew nothing

about the extermination of the Jews.

Irving's record is clear: he is not an historian, and he has

made false statements and been forced to apologize for them.

As Andrew Cohen, reporter for the Financial Post, has said,

"David Irving should be denied credibility."

4. Eustace Mullins

According to analyst Chip Berlet of Political Research

Associates, Mullins is quite simply, "the most vicious

anti-Semite on the face of the planet." Eustace Clarence

Mullins, born in 1923, is the author of a biography of Ezra

Pound (a copy exists in the University of Waterloo library). But

he is also the author of numerous truly bizarre tracts published

by small Christian publishers. Some of these, like the excerpt

recently posted and then removed by Kitchener store owner

Rothe, are critiques of the banking system. Berlet says,

"Mullins masks his anti-Semitism with a critique of the [U.S.]

Federal Reserve System." In a 1952 book, Mullins wrote a

book blaming Paul Warburg, Bernard Baruch, and other U.S.

Jews for drowning Americans in debt.

According to Mullins, The Federal Reserve Act of 1913 put the

nation's banking reserves in the hands of the "Jewish

International Bankers" for the purpose of carrying out a plan

for world dictatorship. In a 1955 article entitled, "Jews mass

poison American children", Mullins claimed that the polio

vaccine, invented by Jonas Salk, was a poison because it

contains live polio germs. Other books depict Jews as

parasites, living off their gentile hosts. In what has to be one of

the most bizarre of Mullins' beliefs, it has been reported by L.

J. Davis that Mullins has claimed that the phrase "Have a nice

day" is a code for Jews to begin killing Christians. Mullins'

writings have been adopted wholesale by violent extremists in

the US, such as the Posse Comitatus. Should we not be more

than a little worried to see those writings appearing in the

window of a store in Kitchener?

5. Fred Leuchter

Rothe sells the "Leuchter report" in his store, a book

purporting to be an engineer's refutation of the existence of

gas chambers in Poland. (David Irving also uses Leuchter's

report to support his claims.) What Rothe will not tell you,

however, is that Fred Leuchter is not an engineer. Rothe also

won't tell you that, according to the Boston Globe, Leuchter

admitted to illegally collecting 20 pounds of building and soil

samples in Poland, and that Leuchter's ``analysis'' has been

thoroughly rebutted in a report by French pharmacist

Jean-Claude Pressac. Pressac "noted that Leuchter never

looked at documents in the Auschwitz Museum, and failed to

study German blueprints of the gas chambers." Leuchter is a

self-described expert in the construction of execution

machines. With his false credentials, he convinced authorities

in several states in the U.S. to let him construct execution

machinery for their prisons. But in 1990, according to the New

York Times, his misrepresentations began to unravel. The

Attorney General of Alabama questioned his expertise. Illinois

terminated his contract after determining that his machine for

injecting cyanide would cause prisoners unnecessary pain.

Then, in October 1990, Leuchter was charged with fraud in

Massachusetts. It was revealed that he had only a bachelor's

degree in history, and was not licensed to practice

engineering in Massachusetts. In June 1991, to avoid a trial in

which he would surely have been convicted, Leuchter

admitted that, "I am not and have never been registered as a

professional engineer", and that he had falsely represented

himself as one. Under the consent agreement, Leuchter