After a lengthy trial commencing January 7th , Zündel was convicted on February 28, 1985 by a jury on the charge concerning "Did Six Million Really Die?" and sentenced on March 25, 1985 to fifteen months imprisonment plus probation for three years. He was acquitted on the charge concerning "The West, War and Islam."

Zündel was released on bail with the following condition among others:

"That he keep the peace and be of good behaviour and, without limiting the generality of this condition that, in particular, he not publish directly or indirectly, by writing or by speaking in public, anything in support or furtherance of the views and assertions of facts expressed in the publication which was the subject of his conviction." (Order of Mr. Justice Tarnopolsky, March 26, 1985)

Zündel would be subject to this sweeping gag order restricting his freedom and curtailing his civil and human rights for almost seven years as his case wound its way to the Supreme Court of Canada. It prevented him from replying to or correcting outright lies and falsehoods printed in the media or written about him by the Jewish lobby groups.

Sabina Citron expressed satisfaction at the sentence: "This kind of activity will not be tolerated," she said. (Toronto Star, March 25, 1985)

The Jewish organizations, including B'nai Brith, the Canadian Jewish Congress, Citron's Canadian Holocaust Remembrance Association, and the Jewish Defence League immediately began a private and public campaign to pressure the government to deport Zündel to Germany.

A march and rally of some 5,000 people in downtown Toronto at the city's O'Keefe Centre was organized by the Canadian Jewish Congress, B'nai Brith and the Jewish Students Network. Calls to deport Zündel were made by speaker after speaker including the leader of the Ontario NDP Party, Bob Rae. These calls for deportation were greeted by standing ovations and cheers from the crowd. (Toronto Star, March 11, 1985)

Some people did not see the rally and calls for deportation as benign. In a letter to the editor to the Toronto Sun, a J. Thomas wrote:

"It seems to me that hatred is a double-edged sword. The spectacle of 4,000 Jews, very well organized, marching from City Hall to O'Keefe Centre and the voluble utterances of numerous speakers all symbolically crying 'Barrabas, Barrabas, give us Barrabas,' was a frightening display of mob rule...The demand, shrill and continuous, that Zündel be deported is far exceeding the bounds of justice and reveals itself as hatred of anyone who dares question the power of a small minority of Canadians." (J. Thomas, letter to the editor, Toronto Sun, March 21, 1985)

Canada's Minister of Immigration, Flora MacDonald, announced after a cabinet meeting on March 26, 1985 that officials of her department had been instructed to take steps to deport Zündel as soon as they had reviewed a report of his sentence. (Toronto Sun, March 27, 1985)

Incredibly, even though Zündel's criminal appeals had not been exhausted, he was ordered deported from Canada on April 29, 1985 after a brief immigration hearing. B'nai Brith expressed pleasure that the deportation order was made: "We're very pleased to see that the government has acted quickly. I think it's the proper process and the right decision." (Toronto Star, April 30, 1985)

The Toronto Star reported that "[a] spokesman for Immigration Minister Flora MacDonald said it was pure coincidence that the decision to deport Zündel was made on the day more than 3,000 Jews met in Ottawa to honour the victims of the Holocaust." (Toronto Star, April 30, 1985)

Zündel immediately appealed and two years later, on July 7, 1987, the deportation order was quashed as having been issued contrary to law. Zündel had again to bear the financial cost of fighting this arbitrary and illegal deportation.

In June of 1985, four members of the Jewish Defence League were tried on charges of causing a disturbance by attacking Zündel and his supporters as they attempted to enter the University Ave. Courthouse in Toronto for his trial in January of 1985. The evidence indicated that Meir Halevi (real name Marvin Weinstein) and the other members of the JDL tossed eggs, shouted "Never again!" and started throwing punches at Zündel's supporters. Police witnesses stated they saw Halevi "punching and kicking at members of the Zündel group." He stated that "The Zündel people were fighting back in defence..." (Toronto Star, June 6, 1985)

All four members of the group were acquitted, however, by Provincial Court Judge Jack Climans who held there was a reasonable doubt the men had fought and that even if they had fought, there was no evidence they were not acting in self-defence. He stated that "there are many ways to get into the courthouse if you want to go in quietly," intimating that Zündel should have tried to sneak in by the back door. (Toronto Star, June 21, 1985)

In July of 1985, shortly after the trial and conviction of Alberta school teacher Jim Keegstra for promoting hatred against Jews, Meir Halevi of the Jewish Defence League publicly threatened physical harm to Keegstra. He was quoted in the Toronto Sun as follows:

"Sometimes there's only one way to get rid of a hater like that, and that's violence...The first thing you do when you have a Jim Keegstra or a neo-Nazis of that type is you pounce on them physically. The second thing you do is take them to court." (Toronto Sun, July 31, 1985)

After the Zündel trial, the Jewish organizations began to squabble over which should get credit for the successful criminal prosecution. In a letter to Alan Shefman, head of the League for Human Rights of B'nai Brith, Rose Ehrenworth of the Canadian Holocaust Remembrance Association alleged that Shefman had tried to give the impression in a cable TV interview that it was B'nai Brith that was responsible for the successful charges against Zündel. "Not that you are alone in this misrepresentation; another group in Toronto which purports to represent the Toronto Jewish community, also likes to give the same impression," she wrote in the letter which was reprinted in the Jewish Times newspaper. She stated that it was the Canadian Holocaust Remembrance Association alone, however, that laid the charges and that it had also "supplied the Crown Attorney with all the necessary evidence, witnesses, information, film, etc. to enable him to build a strong case." Spokesman from other Jewish organizations had been quoted as stating before Zündel's conviction that the group had been "ostracized by the Jewish community" and that "there isn't a Jew or non-Jew who agrees with what the Canadian Holocaust Remembrance Association is doing". Now they were trying to take credit for it. (Jewish Times, Dec. 6, 1985)

A year after Zündel's trial a 200 page book entitled "Hate on Trial: The Zündel Affair, the Media and Public Opinion in Canada" was published. The book was written by a Canadian professor and an Israeli sociologist, Conrad Winn and Gabriel Weimann, and was, according to the book's preface, "made possible thanks to a grant from the League for Human Rights of B'nai Brith, which was in turn made possible by a grant from the Multiculturalism Directorate, Secretary of State, Government of Canada."

"Hate on Trial" sought to measure through scientific polling data the effect of the massive media coverage of the Zündel trial on public opinion in Canada concerning Jews, the Holocaust and Germans. "The central motivation for our research project," wrote the authors, "was to find out what truly happened in the mind of the Canadian public. Did support for the Nazi perspective grow as a result of the trial and as a result of media coverage of the trial? Did more Canadians become prejudiced against Jews as a result of the affair? How were attitudes towards Germans affected? What specific roles did television and the press have in shaping Canadian attitudes? Were the media as harmful as many people, including journalists, feared?" (p. 31)

The researchers found that news coverage of the trial:

"...did more harm to the image of Germans than that of Jews...Two thirds of Canadians did not change their opinions as a result of the extensive coverage of Mr. Zündel's sensational seven week trial, but of those who did, the vast majority became less sympathetic to Germans and more sympathetic to Jews, the authors conclude...[W]hile television had a strong emotional impact, the effect was exactly opposite to what many people expected. "People who were heavy, heavy television viewers said they became more sympathetic to Jews, " Professor Conrad Winn of Carleton University said." (Globe & Mail, March 22, 1986)

Manual Prutschi, spokesman for the Canadian Jewish Congress expressed "surprise" at the findings. Irving Abella, a York University professor who was later to become president of the Canadian Jewish Congress expressed "shock" at the polling results. (Globe & Mail, March 22, 1986)

Zündel appealed his conviction to the Ontario Court of Appeal and on January 23, 1987, the court allowed the appeal and ordered a new trial. It was held that Zündel had not received a fair trial on the grounds that (a) no challenge for cause of potential jurors had been allowed notwithstanding the extremely prejudicial pre-trial publicity generated by the case; (b) a misdirection on the law by the judge to the jury which the appeal court was "a serious error and was gravely prejudicial to the appellant; (c) the improper showing to the jury of the film "Nazi Concentration Camps" which constituted inadmissible hearsay evidence; and (d) the refusal of the trial judge to admit much of Zündel's evidence into the trial. This evidence included architectural scale models of the crematoria buildings in Auschwitz which had been built based on the original German plans found in the Auschwitz archives by Dr. Faurisson. The trial judge had also refused to admit numerous German language books Zündel had relied on to form his opinions. (R. v. Zündel (1987), 58 O.R. (2d) 129 (Ont. C.A.)

B'nai Brith, the Canadian Jewish Congress and the Canadian Holocaust Remembrance Association immediately commenced a campaign to pressure the provincial government to appeal the decision to the Supreme Court of Canada and in the event of this move failing, to retry Zündel a second time. Attorney General Ian Scott told the press that "all major Jewish organizations asked him to continue prosecuting Zündel." (Toronto Star, Feb. 11, 1987) A delegation from the Simon Wiesenthal Centre comprising Sol Littman and lawyers John Rosen and Earl Levy, met with the Attorney General to "urge a second trial." The delegation "advised the Attorney General that if called upon, the Simon Wiesenthal Centre was prepared to lend its world-wide research facilities to the Crown. They expressed willingness to aid in the search for witnesses, locate archival documents, provide historical information and recommend scholarly experts in the field of Holocaust studies." (Response, March 1987)

The Crown applied for leave to appeal the decision to the Supreme Court of Canada in an attempt to overturn the Court of Appeal's favourable ruling to Zündel. Zündel once again paid the huge appeal costs for his defence.

Zündel made conciliatory gestures to the Jewish community during a press conference in Ottawa on the steps of the Supreme Court building, suggesting a debate and symposium to spare the tax-paying public the expense and the Jewish community the trauma of another trial. There was no response by the Jewish leadership to these gestures.

On June 4, 1987, the Supreme Court of Canada decided not to allow the Crown's application for leave to appeal. That same day, Attorney General Ian Scott announced that Zündel would be tried a second time on the "false news" charge concerning "Did Six Million Really Die?".

THIRD CHARGE LAID AGAINST ZÜNDEL BY SABINA CITRON

Shortly after the decision of the Ontario Court of Appeal allowing Zündel's appeal in January of 1987, Sabina Citron appeared as a guest on the CBC Radio Noon Phone-In Hour with David Shatsky on January 30th for the purpose of explaining to listeners why the Zündel case should proceed to the Supreme Court of Canada.

Zündel also appeared on the radio show explaining what he thought of his legal situation and his beliefs on the Holocaust:

"Germans are innocent of the charge of genocide against the Jews...Sabina Citron's friends, and Sabina Citron herself, had every opportunity during that seven and a half week trial, Mr. Shatsky, to bring us the orders for the extermination of the Jews. They cannot because there is none. And Sabina Citron, I want to add right here, is only one person...to bring that lady on is to open up old wounds, to agitate the Jewish community, to create community discontent, to create community unrest. She is an agitator. She was even too uncomfortable for the generally wise leadership of the Jewish community who did not want to have this trial.

Citron told reporters she was "stunned" that Zündel was on the programme and upset that he was to get equal time addressing the question of whether he should be given another trial. When she found she could not respond to callers, she "stormed off" the Radio Noon set. (Toronto Star, Jan. 31, 1987; Globe & Mail, Jan. 31, 1987)

Citron, Helen Smolack, the Canadian Holocaust Remembrance Association, the Toronto Zionist Council and several Jewish individuals who had testified at Zündel's first trial as "Holocaust survivors" subsequently sued the CBC in the Supreme Court of Ontario for general damages for libel of $14,500,000, aggravated damages of $14,500,00 and punitive damages of $14,500,00. Citron claimed that the CBC had maliciously broadcast Zündel's statements which she alleged were defamatory of the survivors of Nazi concentration camps living in Canada. The case appears to have been settled out of court.

On August 25, 1987, some seven months after the talk show incident, Citron laid another charge against Zündel alleging that he had again spread "false news' in the radio broadcast. On September 18, 1987, the charge was withdrawn by the Crown on the grounds that Zündel's statements during the show constituted opinion not falling within the purview of the "false news" section of the Criminal Code.

THE SECOND TRIAL - "SPREADING FALSE NEWS" (1988)

Prior to the commencement of the second trial, Sabina Citron and the Canadian Holocaust Remembrance Association brought an application on December 22, 1987 to intervene in the trial for the purpose of arguing that the trial judge should take judicial notice of the "Holocaust." The motion was denied.

On January 18, 1988 the second trial commenced. It lasted sixty-one days. The trial judge took judicial notice of the Holocaust right at the outset of the trial before any evidence was called. The evidence of Dr. Raul Hilberg from the trial in 1985 was read into evidence because Hilberg refused to return to Canada, informing the Crown in a letter that:

I have grave doubts about testifying in the Zündel case again...Were I to be in the witness box for a second time, the defence would be asking not merely the relevant and irrelevant questions put to me during the first trial, but it would also make every attempt to entrap me by pointing to any seeming contradiction, however trivial the subject might be, between my earlier testimony and an answer that I might give in 1988." 

The Crown called seven witnesses. Significantly, no "Holocaust survivors" were called by the prosecution as in the first trial. Zündel called twenty-three witnesses to establish the veracity of the booklet "Did Six Million Really Die?".

One of the most important of these witnesses was American execution equipment expert Fred A. Leuchter, Jr., who was commissioned by Zündel in the winter of 1988 to conduct a forensic examination of the gas chambers at Auschwitz, Birkenau and Majdanek. Leuchter flew to Poland and examined the alleged gassing sites at the camps and removed samples from the walls and floors. Samples were also removed from a fumigation room at Birkenau where Zyklon B had been used to delouse mattresses and clothing. Zyklon B, a cyanide-based chemical agent, was comparable in its usage to the DDT used by the Americans. German authorities used Zyklon B throughout the war to fumigate ships, barracks and clothing. Holocaust historians claimed that the Zyklon B was also used by the Nazis in the gas chambers to kill millions of Jews.

Leuchter was recognized by the court as an expert in the operation of gas chambers by the trial judge and he so instructed the jury:

"During your absence, ladies and gentlemen,...I made a ruling that this witness may give opinion evidence with respect to the operation of gas chambers. He is a person who is consulted...in the United States on the construction, design, maintenance and operation of gas chambers. He went to three camps, and he made certain observations. He also consulted plans that were available there and armed himself with certain information from the literature and made observations. He will compare what he saw there with what he would normally work with in that area of his endeavour, and he will express opinions as to the suitability of the facilities he saw, having regard to his area of expertise." (Transcript, 1988, Vol. 32, p. 9062-63)

Leuchter testified that based on his inspection of the sites in Auschwitz, Birkenau and Majdanek, his observations of their construction, and the results of chemical analysis of samples of brick and mortar removed from the sites, the alleged gas chambers at the camps could not have been used as homicidal gas chambers.

The samples of brick and mortar removed from the alleged gas chambers by Leuchter in Auschwitz, Birkenau and Majdanek were analysed by Alpha Analytical Laboratories in the United States. Dr. James Roth, previously of Cornell University and the present laboratory manager of Alpha Analytical Laboratories, testified concerning the results obtained. These showed that in the alleged gassing sites, either no traces or only tiny traces (0 to 7.9 mg./kg.) of cyanide were found in the samples while in the samples from the fumigation room at the Birkenau camp where Zyklon B was used to delouse clothing and mattresses, the level of cyanide was extremely high (1,050 mg./kg.).

The Leuchter Report was submitted to the court as a lettered exhibit and was subsequently translated into many languages and distributed widely throughout the world. British historian David Irving testified in a voir dire that the implications of the Leuchter Report were" shattering" for Holocaust historiography. He stated that prior to Zündel's sending of Leuchter to Auschwitz, there had been no forensic examinations of the sites conducted whatsoever and concluded that "it portrays a certain weakness of the supporters of the Holocaust historiography that they have not undertaken this kind of analysis in the past." (Transcript, 1988, p. 33-9424)

Dr. Robert Faurisson, the leading Holocaust revisionist historian, testified about the findings of his years of research. The Jewish author J.G. Burg, who had worked with Zündel over the years, testified that there were no gas chambers in Nazi camps. Thies Christophersen, who had been stationed near Auschwitz during the war and subsequently wrote a book on his experiences that Zündel had translated and published, testified about his observations. Maria van Herwaarden, a German who had been interned at Auschwitz during the war; gave the court her eye witness testimony of life in the camp. Dr. Russell Barton testified about his experiences as a young British medical student at Bergen-Belsen immediately after its liberation; Dr. Kuang Fann, a professor from York University and an expert in linguistics and the philosophy of language, testified that the booklet "Did Six Million Really Die?" was a polemic which constituted political opinion; Emil Lachout, a post-war military police official of Austria, testified that the western Allies investigated the German concentration camps after the war and determined that none had used gas chambers; Bill M. Armontrout, the warden of Missouri State Penitentiary, testified about the operation of the prison's gas chamber and stated that Fred Leuchter was the only consultant in the United States that he knew of in the operation of gas chambers. Armontrout had highly recommended Leuchter to Zündel as an expert in gas chambers prior to the trial.

Continue . . .