In his own words, David Irving states in the Errol Morris-Leuchter film that he became a "hard-core disbeliever" of the Holocaust, once he studied the Leuchter Report during the 1988 Trial of Ernst Zündel in Toronto.
Dr. Faurisson called David Irving "the reluctant Revisionist" because - even though he painstakingly revised large segments of the Third Reich's role in World War II in highly acclaimed books such as "Hitler's War" and "Churchill's War" - he danced around the subject of the Holocaust, confusing friend and foe.
His life was changed forever, once he testified in the Second Great Holocaust Trial of Ernst Zündel, where he called the Leuchter Report a "shattering document and "a stroke of genius" by the defense, and thereby jeopardized one of the most illustrious writing careers in Europe. Speaking the truth about the twentieth century's most politically protected taboo has a price - and even David Irving, the most widely published author on historical subjects in the post-war period, felt it painfully.
After much time and many trials and tribulations in Germany, Canada, Australia, Italy and Austria as well as a global campaign of character assassination, during which he had to content with the full brunt of the Holocaust Lobby who made his life a living hell, David Irving decided to strike back - and strike back hard, using the law as his weapon. He sued two of his main detractors for libel, and the first trial is beginning next week.
One defendant is Emory University professor of Jewish Religion and Holocaust Studies, Deborah Lipstadt, and the other is British historian Gita Sereny, a well-known author of pro-Holocaust books, who wrote (or commented on?) a review in the Observer.
When Ernst Zündel first learned of David Irving's lawsuits against Lipstadt and Sereny, and his wish to stay away from the Holocaust and make these trials strictly libel trials dealing with his damaged reputation only, Ernst said many months ago: "David is going to have a Holocaust trial whether he likes it or not. His enemies will see to that."
That prediction is now coming true. Already David Irving is being billed by various mainstream media sources, who seldom dealt with Revisionist subjects in a serious way, as ". . . the most important and influential Holocaust Denier." They are building him up as a "Holocaust Revisionist", which David Irving is not. This prolific author has not written a single book, nor even an in-depth article, on the Holocaust topic. Nonetheless, he is going to be ***made*** into a "reluctant Revisionist" by the enemy!
Let no one say there isn't serendipity afoot!
The Holocaust Lobby is stirring the pot. The enemies of truth and freedom are pulling out all stops. Yesterday, the LA Times ran an informative piece in a front page article - to be dissected below and, in a second segment, tomorrow. CNN is planning to do a special on Sunday, January 9, at 8 p.m. Eastern Standard Time. Time Magazine, I was told, will shortly be running a feature. This morning, the British Guardian already ran a piece. And this is only the beginning. David Irving, the Lobby hopes, will be their straw man whom they are now building up so they can knock him down and thus, they hope at least, destroy the Revisionist movement once and for all!
Of course, Zündel aficionados have seen first-hand that these political trials have a way of flushing out surprises!
The Lipstadt trial is expected to run as long as three months, and when it is over - regardless of the outcome! - the world will know once and for all that there are very serious, knowledgeable people questioning the Holocaust. Millions and ever more millions will know what Revisionists say - and what they have uncovered!
CNN's zine ran a little promo piece today:
The Holocaust - five to six million Jews systematically exterminated by the Nazis. It is an unquestionable matter of fact - right? As surprising as it may seem, the actual events of the Holocaust will come into question this week as a much-anticipated trial gets underway in Great Britain.
British historian David Irving has said there is no documented evidence to prove that there were gas chambers at the Auschwitz concentration camp or that Hitler ordered the extermination of Europe's Jews. When Deborah Lipstadt, a professor of Jewish studies at Atlanta's Emory University, accused him of "joining the ranks of Holocaust deniers" in her book Denying the Holocaust, Irving sued Lipstadt for libel.
Irving . . . has questioned aspects of the Holocaust, such as the existence of gas chambers and how many Jews were killed by the Nazis. (. . . ) British law places the burden of proof on the defendant in libel suits; now Lipstadt must prove that Irving denies the existence of the Holocaust."
Today and tomorrow I am picking the Los Angeles Times lead article apart - which is noteworthy for its straight reporting in this instance, by the way, as "Holocaust Denial" write-ups go. This is a praiseworthy first for a nationwide, mainstream paper.
Nonetheless, for all the newbies out there who are following my ZGrams and who will soon be following the Irving Trial, here are the LA Times segments, interspersed with brief Zundelsite comments for balance and correction of errors.
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Los Angeles Times:
Danger in Denying Holocaust?
A revisionist is accusing a prominent critic of the movement of libel. Scholars and survivors say the evidence is irrefutable, but those who question the extent of horrors say they pay a price.
By KIM MURPHY, Times Staff Writer
A young German chemist named Germar Rudolf took crumbling bits of plaster from the walls of Auschwitz in 1993 and sent them to a lab for analysis. There were plenty of traces of cyanide gas in the delousing chambers where Nazi camp commanders had had blankets and clothing fumigated. There was up to a thousand times less in the rooms described as human gas chambers.
Rudolf, a doctoral candidate at Stuttgart University, concluded that large numbers of Jews may have died of typhoid, starvation and murder at Europe's most famous World War II death camp, but none of them died in a gas chamber.
Zundelsite
"Death camp?" The Red Cross, on their maps, used to call Auschwitz an "extermination camp" until the Red Cross's Charles Biedermann in the 1988 Zundel Trial revealed that this was an Allied post-war propaganda term. (Go to the Zundelsite and type "Biedermann" into the customized search engine...)
Los Angeles Times:
When a report on his findings--commissioned by a former Third Reich general--got out, Rudolf lost his job at the respected Max Planck Institute and his doctoral degree was put on hold. He was sentenced to 14 months in prison under a 1985 German law making it a crime to incite racial hatred, his landlord kicked him out, he fled into exile and his wife filed for divorce.
Zundelsite:
General Remer did not commission the report. It was ***published*** in Remer's publication, apparently without the approval of Germar Rudolf.
Los Angeles Times:
There are many who say Rudolf got exactly what he deserved. But to the increasingly vocal movement of Holocaust deniers and revisionists, Rudolf stands as a crucial figure because of what he represents: a highly trained chemist who purports--despite a wide variety of scientific evidence to the contrary--to have physical proof that the gas chambers at Auschwitz did not exist.
Zundelsite:
What "wide variety of scientific evidence to the contrary"?
Los Angeles Times:
Over the last decade, supporters of such theories have scrutinized hundreds of thousands of pages of Third Reich documents and diaries made available after the collapse of the Soviet Union. They have analyzed gas chamber construction. They have pinpointed contradictions and hard-to-believe details in stories told by camp survivors and, amid nearly universal scorn from the academic establishment, won testimonials for some of their work from academics at respected institutions, such as Northwestern University and the University of Lyon.
Zundelsite:
False again. Dr. Butz, Dr. Faurisson, Thies Christophersen, Ditlieb Felderer, Dr. Austin App, Udo Walendy (as did Leuchter in 1988) all had exposed the Holocaust as a fraud in the 1960s and 1970s - several decades ***before*** the Soviet Union collapsed.
Los Angeles Times:
The revisionists, whose theories will be at the center of a high-profile libel trial scheduled to begin Tuesday in London, are not operating in a vacuum. A 1993 poll by the Roper Organization found that 22% of Americans thought it possible that the Holocaust never happened.
The theorists contend that far fewer than 6 million Jews died in Europe during World War II--and that most of those who died did so through starvation, disease and ad hoc executions carried out by lower-level Nazi officers.
Zundelsite:
What theorists? There are no theorists and no theories. Revisionists base their findings and results on historical documents and statistical and scientifically verifiable facts.
Los Angeles Times:
That scenario has been almost universally dismissed as a flawed misreading of history, cooked up out of deep-seated anti-Semitism. Indeed, at least two dozen people have been prosecuted in Germany, France, Spain, Austria, Poland and Canada since 1990 under various laws prohibiting racial hatred and the defaming of the memory of those who died in Nazi death camps for even questioning what has become one of the defining horrors of the modern age.
Zundelsite:
The policy of the Western academic and political elites has been: "Don't debate! Incarcerate!"
Los Angeles Times:
Now one of the leading deniers of the Holocaust, British historian David Irving, is striking back, suing the most prominent critic of the movement, Emory University professor Deborah Lipstadt, for libel. The trial is likely to feature many of the world's premier WWII historians weighing in on the mechanics, logistics, chain of command and blueprints for the extermination of millions of European Jews.
Zundelsite:
Imagine the nonsense that will come to the fore! Revisionist fodder for the future! Besides, one cannot deny what did not take place! The smear term "Holocaust Denier" is just one more emotion-laden trigger phrase meant to scare the doubting Thomases into terrified silence so that they don't question the taboo!
Los Angeles Times:
In her book, "Denying the Holocaust: The Growing Assault on Truth and Memory," Lipstadt accuses Irving of skewing documents and misrepresenting data. The book quotes analysts who describe his work as "closer to theology or mythology than to history." As a British citizen, Irving can take advantage of British libel law, which places much of the burden on Lipstadt to prove her book did not libel the historian. Irving says his lawsuit will prove Lipstadt's book is part of an international Jewish campaign to discredit him.
Zundelsite:
It is the Holocaust promoters, especially Jews, who have turned this non-event into a quasi secular religion for the world - with holy days, holy shrines, saints, unorthodox proselytizers, missionaries out to convert people, and emotional "hit squads" who function as the politically correct police who are verbally protecting a lucrative dogma.
Los Angeles Times:
Irving, author of biographies of Adolf Hitler and his propaganda chief, Joseph Goebbels, has argued that Hitler has never been found to have ordered a massive extermination of the Jews and, in fact, tried to stop some of the killings. He has described Auschwitz as "a very brutal slave labor camp, where probably 100,000 Jews died." And not unlike U.S. Reform Party presidential candidate Patrick J. Buchanan, he asserts the world would have been better served if Winston Churchill had accepted Hitler's peace overtures in 1940 and allowed Hitler to fight it out with Josef Stalin in Russia.
Zundelsite:
Finally (!) some statements of truth and importance as well as substance! Three cheers for the Los Angeles Times!
To be continued tomorrow.
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Thought for the Day:
"I once read a message in a newsgroup from a Jewish guy with a pseudonym who was viciously attacking (a revisionist). He crowed to a cohort, "Don't worry, I'll make an antisemite out of him!" It is a tool, plain and simple. I mean a club, a weapon."
(Letter to the Zundelsite)
Back to Table of Contents of the Jan. 2000 ZGrams