Лев Гунин - ГУЛаг Палестины
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
agreed to stop "using in any manner whatsoever the title
'engineer'", and to stop distribution of the Leuchter report.
Despite the agreement, one can still obtain copies of the
report from Rothe's store in Kitchener. According to the Boston
Globe, Leuchter was deported from Britain in 1991. Leonard
Zakim, a spokesperson for the Anti-Defamation League of
B'nai Brith, said, "Leuchter's admissions of lying to promote
his business in violation of Massachusetts law should serve to
discredit Leuchter wherever he travels." **[See comments on
Leuchter after this article]
6. Paul Fromm
Paul Fromm claims to be the director of a group called
"Canadian Association of Free Expression". While the name
sounds innocuous, the truth is darker. According to
investigative journalist Russ Bellant, Fromm helped found the
Canadian neo-Nazi organization Western Guard. In a 1983
interview with a Toronto Star reporter, Fromm was caught
dissembling. He said he "never had any connection" with the
Western Guard, but the Star account revealed that Fromm
himself had had a letter published in the Star in February
1973 that stated "... in May, 1972, many members, myself
included, left the Western Guard...". Asked to explain the
discrepancy, Fromm said in a Star interview that it was "a
matter of semantics". In Julian Sher's 1983 account of the Ku
Klux Klan, Fromm is reported as saying that belief of a
supreme race "is a good idea." Remarks like this caused him
to be kicked out of the federal Progressive Conservative Party.
In September 1991, the Star reported that Fromm was ejected
from a Toronto meeting on race relations after he blurted out,
"Scalp them," while a native Canadian was speaking. In April
1992, the Star reported on Fromm's 1990 speech before the
Heritage Front, a neo-Nazi organization advocating white
supremacy. According to the Star, Fromm told the neo-Nazi
group, "We're all on the same side." Fromm later claimed in a
Star article that he hadn't known about the Heritage Front's
neo-Nazi views. But Bernie Farber of the Canadian Jewish
Congress disputes this. "He had to know," Farber said. "There
was a Nazi flag with swastikas, about 10 feet long and 5 feet
tall, just to his right. Furthermore, just a few months after the
Star article came out, Fromm spoke again before the same
group."
7. Conclusions
Although the holocaust "revisionists" and their defenders
claim to be in pursuit of the truth, the record says otherwise.
Although some claim to be advocates of free speech, their real
goal is a regime that would deny free speech, and more, to
Jews and other minorities. It is easy to dismiss Rothe, Irving,
Leuchter, Mullins, and Fromm as kooks. But according to
statistics compiled by the League for Human Rights of B'nai
Brith, anti-Semitism in Canada is at its highest level in a
decade. There were 251 reported incidents of harassment and
vandalism against Jews in Canada in 1991, up 42% from two
years earlier. The reader may feel that anti-Semitism is only a
distant threat. But consider this: many of the sources I sought
in preparing this article are listed as ``missing'' in our
University library. Some articles had been ripped out of
magazines. Others books, though still on the shelves, I found
to contain anti-Semitic or pro-Nazi graffiti. To repeat a saying
attributed to Edmund Burke, "The only thing necessary for evil
