To give you a flavor of life at the Zundel-Haus, I thought I would run you an excerpt of July's Power Letter.
"Without exaggeration: June was one hell of a hectic month for us here at the Zundel-Haus! It started with media practically invisible - and ended in a massive media storm!
The bizarre ruling that "truth was not a defence" and "irrelevant" made it increasingly difficult for attorney Christie to conduct his cross-examination, but on the 26th of May, exactly one year after the Tribunal had convened, we kept on introducing material we deemed important for history via the government's chief witness, Dr. Frederick Schweitzer.
Among our "troops", the energy levels were high and often bristling with tension, as people in every room of this four-story Victorian home were concentrating on their tasks. In the midst of the CHRT hearings, there was intense brainstorming and sometimes creative leaps of the imagination by the attorneys with our advisors and witnesses. As often happens in combat, it was a highly volatile time which, in the end, fused all the energies together and ended in what seems to be a victory of sorts - at least what may be called a ceasefire to last until November 9th, 1998.
I will give you just a flavor of how things were experienced at the Zundel-Haus where new combatants joined the old and seasoned veterans. The team did a magnificent job!
High up on the "Eagles Nest" roof patio, with its tent-like roof to keep out the blazing sun, which I had built after the fire to have at least one place that affords me some silence and privacy, Doug Christie has stationed himself and was busy pouring over law books and precedent cases. Two levels below, Doug's colleague and able assistant, Barbara Kulaszka, was drafting and polishing ever more judicial review motions of every decision-like "Truth is no defense" ruling by the Tribunal.
One level lower still, witnesses arrived by car, plane and train and started preparing to deliver their testimony. Volunteer members were off to the library and book stores, combing through archives and shelves and ordering rare titles. Computer-literate people prepared and typed summaries of book after book, to be used as our intellectual ammunition by our witnesses. Other helpers scanned texts or prepared press releases. In yet another part of the building, our TV program production was in full progress, for the weekly satellite show and the 60 public access "Voice of Freedom" shows, broadcast weekly also, had to be produced. Just because there was a trial or tribunal going on did not stop the "show from going on air."
In the basement, the high speed copier kept spitting out tens of thousands of copies daily, which yet others collated, stapled, hole punched or cerlox-bound into all kinds of excerpts for presentation in court. Our bookkeeper kept track of and entered the daily donations, book and video/audio tape orders, typed address labels and personal thank you notes and entered every donation in the computer and, of course, did all the banking. At night, many of our "soldiers for Truth" slept two or three to a room on foam-mattress covered "Auschwitz" beds, built by Zundel carpenters to original Auschwitz specifications for the 1988 Great Holocaust Trial, which luckily survived the fire. In summary, the place was busy as a beehive - and I met myself coming and going, as the proverbial saying goes.
I was busy running around, coping with all manner of crises, large and small - recently mainly financial. I, too, have to make sure that the payroll can be met, that suppliers and the tax department are paid, and to assure a smooth and uninterrupted running of the ever more expanding outreach of the Zundel operation. To my and, I am sure, many a visitor's surprise, somehow order evolves out of chaos every time - and astonishingly and to my enemies' chagrin, we sally forth from this by now historic place crowded with boxes, files, piles of papers, mountains of books, and truckloads of photo copies - to keep the enemies of truth, freedom and justice yet one more time at bay! I am sure no handbook on management has ever been written about this style of management by crisis! The miracle is that it works - and how it worked this past month!! I can only look back and say once again: It was one more time a near-miracle! A "Zundel-Wunder" month!
Thought for the Day - long but how apropos!
"Canada today is a land where most expressions of Holocaust Revisionism have been banned. The censors are unwilling to meet the dissidents in appropriate forums on anything like even ground. . . . Toronto's publisher Ernst Zundel has been and remains the focus of this extraordinary Canadian fight, which may be a harbinger for the United States.
One thing is certain. However the lawyers and judges may decide the Zundel case and the case of Revisionism, the engineers, technicians and allied historians will feel free to withhold support, and to convene a "court" of their own.
(Robert Lenski, Zundel biographer in "The Holocaust on Trial", 1988, Reporter Press, available for $25 by writing to: 6965 El Camino Real, # 105-588, La Costa, CA 92009, USA)