Summary and Zundel commentary about the last two court
hearings, July 28 and August 4, in Mannheim, but first this:
Apparently there is nothing to be relayed about the hearing
on August 4. It lasted only half a day and was reported to me, again, as
"grindingly boring." No questions or topics whatsoever of any
political significance pertaining to this case are allowed! Imagine you are
a defense attorney in a burglary trial in which you cannot mention
"burglary" - or else, YOU go to jail! - because the burglars wrote
the laws and thus control the court!
As I have said before, this avoiding of the taboo may be a
prosecution tactic to keep Zundel supporters away from the court room, who
in the beginning, came great distances and at considerable cost and
inconvenience to themselves to show their support of the man they admire and
have assisted for decades.
The following assessment of the courtroom ambience from the
hearing days before, particularly July 28, might be of interest to you and
is certainly valuable to be recorded for history, as summarized by Ernst
Zundel in a letter to me:
Quick news from Mannheim! Today was another court day -
Ingrid, it was a sad and sobering day. Not for me - there is nothing that
surprises me any longer about this place and the people who make up the
bureaucracy of this creation.
I had prepared pages of questions based on the documents
available to me. I had written different colored notes, as I have done for
all the other witnesses and topics. Once again, virtually none of the
questions that I had searched out, marked in the approximate 500 pages in
three-ring binders, explained with stick-on notes of relevance, discussed
during breaks or during lulls in the proceedings were asked. (...) It is
not even malice. I think I finally have to admit that this is what has
happened to our people in the face of organized evil.
That's the same reaction I encountered with people from
the former communist countries of the DDR, Soviet Union, Poland,
Yugoslavia, and Bulgaria when I visited those places. There is a stoic,
almost automaton-like interaction where the roles assigned and expected to
be followed are largely followed, and all the participants pretty much
seem to have a sixth sense of where the edges of the playpen are. For me,
the unorthodox, creative thinker and operator, it's as if I was
experiencing one of those slow motion nightmares from which one awakens,
bathed in sweat, panting, heart pounding. Only today it was not a bad
dream - it was an all-too-sad reality.
Attorney Rieger was not here. He told me last week he
could not make it, so the two government-appointed lawyers were there. But
they told me early on they were not going to ask any questions on the
"forbidden topic."
In case you wonder who the two government witnesses were -
one was Kriminalhauptkommissar Koelsch, and the other one was former State
Prosecutor Klein.
Ingrid, Koelsch, like Maurer and Kuhl before him, are
simply German bureaucrats, time-servers who have really very, very little
elbow space and original initiative. They can be compared to low-echelon
Befehlsempfänger/recipients of orders to be carried out, like every
system produces - except that these Germans seemed a little more worn out,
resigned, as if their inner flame had petered out a long time ago.
Extinguished soul-wise!
In reading about them - their assessments, notes, letters
in the files - I had of course my private thoughts about this modern form
of cogs in the wheel. When I encountered them, I could not even muster
dislike, I could not even bring myself to feel revulsion about their roles
in all this. It may sound strange to you, Ingrid, but I felt no
resentment, no anger - only pity for them and an infinite sadness for
Germany. No wonder this country is failing in so many sectors and
stagnating in others!
Ex-Chancellor Helmut Schmidt said in a TV interview that
the Germans had lost their vitality, and these apparatschiks demonstrated
that with their sluggish movements, their tired, worn-out body language,
their emotionless bearing, their dead, echo-chamber-like [voices]. Ingrid,
I pitied them from the bottom of my heart. Compared to their miserable,
autopilot-like careers, you and I have led incredibly interesting, varied,
stimulating lives. They are like tiny, anonymous, colorless ants!
Hans-Heiko Klein, the self-professed Überzeugungstäter/fanatic
ideologue - Ingrid, Klein was a very, very big disappointment, even to me,
his victim! Imagine that! I actually felt sad for Dr. Meinerzhagen and his
colleague, Judge Hamm. Klein was utterly unprofessional! There he sat,
bulldog-faced, deep growl, hardly understandable because he swallowed his
words, mumbling, not talking into the microphone - not that it mattered
much, Ingrid, the man is an arrogant ignoramus, a type obviously only
possible in this [country's] legal set-up. He would not have lasted very
long in a Canadian courtroom! Honestly, Ingrid, of all the witnesses I
have seen in my decades of legal proceedings, Klein was one of the least
impressive.
His [testimony] was a disaster! He behaved in a manner
that certainly reflected badly on the German judicial system. He could not
remember obvious things - matters he should have known! When Dr. Schaller
tried to get him to explain what Rechtsextremismus/Extremism of the Right
was, he at first refused to answer, then gave smart-alec answers - until
finally Dr. Meinerzhagen directed him to please answer the question, it
was relevant! Ingrid, a Canadian high school junior could have given a
better answer! It was clear that the two judges were also frustrated and
embarrassed. I was embarrassed for the media who was there.
Imagine, a German prosecutor having to be repeatedly
reminded by the Judges, Dr. Meinerzhagen and Judge Hamm, to answer
justified questions! Klein's appearance was to me an anticlimax, for he
was virtually a waste of the court's time and added very little to the
case.