Ken Cuthbertson, Editor
Queen's Alumni Review
Kingston, ON K7L 3N6

June 26, 2007

Dear Ken,

When we spoke some months ago on the prospects for publication of my letter on Dachau, you assured me that you would have no hesitation, as a responsible editor and academic, to publish without fear or favour, and that freedom to express controversial, dissident or unorthodox opinions was the very essence of the true university spirit (I'm paraphrasing you somewhat, perhaps but that was your response as I recall it). You said something to the effect that it would be a violation of your personal principles to yield to intimidation in arriving at editorial decisions and that your readership consisted of mature, educated individuals who were "able to think for themselves" and decide for themselves after seeing both sides of any given argument.

Nevertheless, you did not publish my letter, and worse still, characterized it in your editorial on your supposed dilemma, as hateful although there was nothing, explicitly nor implicitly, hateful in its content or purpose.

Quite on the contrary, by revealing that Dachau was not in fact an "Extermination Camp", it conveyed the presumably happy notion, at least for Jews, that the very large number of people said to have been executed "in the gas chambers of Dachau", may have survived. Surely, there is nothing hateful in raising such a prospect.

Which prompts the question, which I hope you will answer forthrightly and with candor, of what precisely your "colleagues and others" found "hateful, intellectually dubious or downright kooky" in my letter. I think you should have challenged such self-serving, intemperate criticism and if it could not be supported by facts and reasoned argument, you should have ignored it.

Also, I found your dismissal of the letter's author as a "Holocaust doubter" quite perplexing. Nowhere in the letter do I deny that Jews perished in World War II, and surely enquiry into the true number and circumstances of their demise cannot legitimately be construed as "denial", any more than an enquiry into the number of Jews who served in combat units of the Canadian Forces suggests that none had served.

Do historians curious to learn how many German civilians were incinerated in Dresden, doubt that a massive fire-bombing of the city took place? It seems to me that the expressions "Holocaust Denier", "Anti-Semite" "neo-nazi" etc used by Holocaust profiteers (exposed by Prof. Finkelstein, the son of Holocaust survivors) to silence their critics, are little better than expletives, and no more meaningful.

The most disingenuously ambiguous comment in your (if I may borrow your phrase) "intellectually dubious" editorial is your claim that editors have a "duty...to screen out such (politically incorrect) letters when it's prudent to do so". Right. Depending how you define "prudent". Apparently your definition is not mine, nor, I dare say, is it a definition acceptable to your "mature readers" seeking the opportunity to decide for themselves where the truth lies.

It is not too late, however, to stand up to the issue, as any intrepid editor of an independent scholarly magazine is expected to do, and print my original letter, plus the above response to you opinion, and let the chips fall where they may. Truth will alwars win over falsehood in a free and open encounter!

With kind regards,

Ian V. Macdonald
Arts '49
455 Wilbrod Street
Ottawa K1N 6M7
613 241 5389
IanVMacdonald@aol.com