Since the prime purpose of the ZGrams is to establish a permanent, day-by-day record of the global intellectual struggle against this century's most hideous deception - the so-called "Holocaust" as force-fed to the Chivalrous when it comes to the Chosen - it is imperative upon me now to jot down yet another "first": the cancellation of a lecture because of one's alliance with the contents of a website - none other than the Zundelsite.
This cancellation happened to your scribe, as I reported yesterday, thanks to the dreaded Zundel Taint.
Below is just the barest sketch by way of background for yet another "Zundel First":
For almost two decades, I have been a fairly well-known speaker on the convention circuit. I am what is known as a "general interest inspirational speaker" who tailors a specific personal experience keynote around a more general topic.
I have, in essence, told and retold the same dramatic story of my life to groups as small as 10 and as large as 8,000. The topic of my keynote is an "intellectual rags-to-riches" journey through many historically based trials and tribulations that made me an award-winning writer.
I have written several books - not all in my own name. I am best known for one, "The Wanderers", which, in fictious form, depicts the story of an ethnic, pious, pacifist community, trapped terrifyingly behind the Iron Curtain and almost genocidally wiped out - NOT by the ever-maligned "Nazis" but by Stalin's Communists.
Many, many times have I retold the story of "Barbarossa" - the victorious advance of the German Wehrmacht in 1941 who came to many ethnic pockets in the East as LIBERATORS, not destroyers. I came out of that background. I owe my life to them.
My presentation is a deep yet funny, fast-paced tale, spiked with all kinds of personal vignettes, that illustrate the social and historic forces that carve a personality. Those of you who are curious and want to know more about me may look me up at http://www.webcom.com/ina/
For almost two decades, I have given this speech more than 500 times. Never once have I been canceled or rebuked for what I had to say. The content of my speech has never been an issue of offense. I would guess that about half of the time, I speak to a standing ovation.
I was booked for such a speech at Trinity College of Vermont in Burlington, Vermont. The reason I was booked was that "The Wanderers" had been required supplementary reading for quite a few years in one of their undergraduate classes. Over the years, I have frequently corresponded with both the professor, a member of the board of a American Historical Association of Germans from Russia, a gracious and sophisticated lady whom I met at one of their conventions. All the feedback I have gotten from the students in her class - all without exception! - has been positive and often even glowing.
Trinity College books a series of celebrities and near-celebrities each year in what is called the Waters Chair Events. These are free programs the college offers as a service to its students and the community at large. It has had in the past such luminaries as the son of Solzhenitsyn and, of course, the honorable Elie Wiesel who, I have been told, was gushingly received.
The theme of this year was: "The Ties That Bind: Human Relations in the Family", and since "The Wanderers" tells of the remnants of a family in Stalin/Hitler times and how they stuck together against the greatest of all odds, I was to be flown in.
The person in charge of these events, a Dr. Oren Davis, called me in early summer of last year and arranged for a conventional booking in terms of lecture fees and travel/accommodation arrangements. Since I had had my eye on this college for some time because of my previous connections, I said that I would gladly come and even offered to use one of my frequent flyer airline tickets to help the college save on expenses.
We extensively discussed the nature of my speech, and I also submitted my press kit. My press kit does not list the Zundelsite as part of my dossier. Why should it? I have been a speaker much longer than I have been the webmaster of what is now the world's most controversial website - or so it often seems. I was not hiding anything; my press kit listed the media work I have done for Zundel Radio and Television. As anybody knows who knows me and my work, I carry myself on my sleeve. I am an open book, but my work for Ernst Zundel had nothing to do with this booking. I have known Ernst Zundel for less than three years; I have been a writer and speaker for twenty. I was to fly out to Vermont yesterday, the 4th of February and lecture tonight to an audience of approximately 500.
I received a call on Friday, January 31, from Dr. Oren Davis, telling me that he had heard that I did work for Mr. Zundel. I said I did, but it had no bearing to what I was going to present. He seemed quite ill at ease and said some students might ask some uncomfortable questions, but I told him he did not have to fear I would embarrass him. I knew how to handle a crowd; I understood that colleges tried to be cognizant of things such as public relations. We discussed the final touches of accommodations and ground transportation, since someone had to pick me up in Montreal, my flight destination, and take me back across the border. I had rehearsed my program and compiled additional notes to keep my speech politically correct.
My suitcase was all packed. My ticket sat, ready and waiting to be picked up at the airport in San Diego. I was about to go and have my hair styled and my nails done when Dr. Davis called and told me in a shaking voice that I had been canceled because ". . . your presence on our campus would overwhelm your lecture."
Dr. Davis has denied that there was political pressure from quarters known to us. According to Dr. Davis, a student who was doing a paper on me as a class project had alerted the administration ". . . to your ZGrams." It seems that an all-day administrative pow wow resulted, at which the highest echelon administrators felt that I would be an image liability. They even checked with ACLU who told them that since it was a private college, there was no problem canceling.
Dr. Davis assured me that this was NOT about Freedom of Speech; this was about the undesirability of my presence on a campus that stood for the "value of life." He said that he himself had been to Auschwitz, and he had seen with his own eyes the ovens, the piles of ashes, the shoes, the crematoria - in other words, the schmeer. How could I, of all people, having come from the background I did, associate with ". . . those people"?
Here is a man, a college professor, who will genuflect before the Wiesel Doctrine espousing faith in a dogma so deep that it seems plausible that the "graves will convulse" and that ". . . geysers of blood" will spurt out MONTHS after the "victims" are dead - yet will not yield the platform to a speaker who happens to believe but promised not to advertise the Fearsome Zundel Creed: THAT SCIENCE CANNOT BE SUSPENDED, NOT EVEN FOR THE "NAZIS".
How's that for an inquiring mind?
I don't know what will happen legally. The college has paid a retainer; they owe me the rest of my fee. Something WILL happen - of that you may be sure! Why? Quite simply for the sake of what Santayana summarized as ". . . nonsense is good only because common sense is so limited."
Mr. Wiesel keeps on whining up and down the ladders of people's gullibilities ". . . against the defamation of the dead." My glove is in the ring to cut down on the defamation of the living.
I gave three media interviews already about this event, and I am sure there will be more. I am thinking of offering my freebee airline ticket now to the first college brave enough to show that it is not afraid to be contaminated by the Zundel Taint and my three extra wrinkles on my wise forehead I have acquired at great costs as the hard-working writer that I am who settles everything in life that gives this journey meaning by letting words run through her fingertips so others may know, too.
Ingrid
Thought for the Day:
"It is a far, far better thing to have a firm anchor in nonsense than to put out on the troubled sea of thought."
(John Kenneth Galbraith)