I was "absent" for 14 days, being involved in various projects a continent away and far away from my computer - if you wrote me a letter or fax, please give me a couple of days so I can see my way clear and respond.
I came home yesterday way past midnight and am still shaking off the jet lag, but I want to tell you with a quiver in my heart that what I saw two days ago in Toronto in the beautifully restored Elgin Theatre *** will change the course of Revisionism.***
And I mean globally.
I am speaking, of course, of the long anticipated Fred Leuchter documentary by Errol Morris, famed producer of award-winning films and documentaries, titled "Mr. Death: The Rise and Fall of Fred Leuchter."
I don't think I need to introduce Fred Leuchter to this list. Newcomers can find his story on the Zundelsite and elsewhere. The Errol Morris documentary portrays a tragic figure, depicting what it costs, and what it takes, to speak a politically incorrect truth today - especially if you rattle the cage of the most powerfully connected Lobby the world has ever seen.
It is a touching portrait.
Yesterday I edited a 24 page Ernst Zündel review of this film, which will be shipped in the Zündel-Haus October Power Letter and, eventually, I hope, in several ZGrams. There will be many more reviews. In fact, I predict that there will be so many reviews of this film that we will have a spectacular kaleidoscope eventually of both rave and poisonous reviews.
For now, I will say this: In spite of the inclusions of the usual shrill, poisonous "racists", "anti-semitic history falsifiers" accusations, this film will open the eyes of millions and make the Holocaust debatable at colleges and in a million homes. If ever a film was destined to become a cult film, this one is going to be it!
So this ZGram is not a review. Before long, this film will play on wide screen in theatres in Canada and America - and people can go, see and judge this extraordinary documentary for themselves. What I want to talk about today is the reaction of an audience to this story.
The premiere I attended with Ernst and several Toronto-based Zundel supporters played Saturday, September 18, a little after noon in downtown Toronto. We had advance tickets and could easily bypass the long queue that formed outside on the sidewalk. I must say that I was slightly apprehensive going to attend this premiere. I thought that we might have to face the usual - the heckling, howling, obscene ARA-type, Jewish Defense League "Stosstruppen" of the traditional Holocaust orthodoxy enforcing crowd.
But nothing of the sort.
The audience were young people - about 18-23 years of age, most of them neatly dressed, intelligent-looking, of quiet and courteous deportment. Not even on the sidewalk was there the usual shuffling and horsing around. They simply stood, talking softly in pairs or groups, and waited patiently in line. When we approached, they stepped aside and quietly let us pass. Some clearly recognized Ernst and waved shyly or nodded. The vast majority were white - in contrast to the passersby on the sidewalk who were of every color, shape and nationality and wore the "downtown" look.
Remember that Ernst Zündel is Villain Numero Uno - not just in Toronto but throughout the length and width of Canada. The invectives poured over this man for the past ten, fifteen years have never seen anything like it! It has simply been buckets and buckets of slime! Whole industries of "hate Zundel" have grown themselves on his back. Remember also that we were attending Toronto's International Film Festival which offered a selection of some 300 films in a couple of weeks, a dozen or so of which played = that same afternoon in different room in that vast theater. These young people could have gone and taken in some traditional sleaze, which had been favorably reviewed by the Toronto mainstream media. Why had they come - to see a documentary that had been written about in all three major Canadian papers as being a "quirky" film about despicable "Holocaust Denial" featuring some "nerdy" technician who went to Auschwitz to chisel off some rocks - and claim that the Jews weren't gassed?
We went into the theatre and sat down. It filled to about two-thirds - I would guess there were about 500-600 people. There was a sprinkling of young Jews and perhaps five or six people of color. The rest were ***our people***. Young. White. And quietly curious.
I will not describe the film itself except to say that it is a masterpiece of cinematography telling an engaging - one might say incredible - story of how Fred Leuchter went to Auschwitz in 1988 in a cloak-and-dagger expedition behind the Iron Curtain, what he did there, what he found and what he did not find - and what happened to him afterwards because of his report and testimony during the 1988 Zundel trial.
I want to talk about this documentary from a public relations point of view - what will it mean to us?
Above all, I wanted to watch the audience reaction to this film.
The first part caused a few snickers and uneasy laughs - because, let's face it, Fred Leuchter isn't exactly Adonis. His job is an odd one, and the lines he delivers are often unintentionally funny, even though he doesn't mean them to be funny. After all, he is an execution equipment expert working in a trade that must strike anyone as strange - and there he is, insisting all along that his intention is to make sure people will be executed, painlessly and, thanks to him, with dignity.
The documentary starts out by introducing Leuchter as a youngster, playing inside US prisons where his father worked as a guard, and shows him as an adult tinkering with gallows, repairing electric chairs and such - for a living! It gives his mundane background. It shows a geeky kind of guy - and, as the film develops, he kind of grows on you.
But then, about one-third into the movie, the screen goes suddenly black. Pitch black. And then appear the words in white Helvetica fonts: "The Trial of Ernst Zündel in Toronto."
At that, the snickering and giggling audience simply hushed. It went so quiet that you could hear a feather drop. And it stayed hushed for the rest of the film. The mood change was sudden - and stark. There was not a single cat call or whistle.
The next thing that happened quite simply took my breath away.
In blazing full colors, filling the entire silver screen, was our booklet of all booklets: "Did Six Million Really Die?"
This is ***the*** booklet that started it all - way back in 1981 when Sabina Citron thought that she could pull the rug from under Mr. Zundel by taking away his mailing privileges. This booklet is the one that's on the Zundelsite. This is the publication that still has us before the odious, abusive Canadian Human Rights Tribunal - almost two decades later!
Man, I am telling you: Plain Wall-to-Wall Revisionism! The kind of advertising for our cause not millions of dollars would have bought!
And not a single sound out of the audience! Silence.
Next scene shows footage from the 1988 Great Holocaust trial - Ernst Zündel being hoisted onto to the shoulders of his friends, unfurling a banner that reads: "The Holocau$t is a Hoax!" - surrounded by supporters that carry signs such as "The Holocaust is a racket" and "The Holocaust is Hate against Germans" etc. That image, too, remained frozen on that screen for what seemed an eternity.
And in that theatre in Toronto, still absolute, almost stunned silence! It almost was as if these people saw a ghost!
The story that unravels from then on can only be described as an artistic dance around a modern day enigma. Fred Leuchter gets to have his say. David Irving tells how he became convinced the Holocaust was fake, thanks to the Leuchter Report. Ernst skillfully torpedoes some authentic Zündel zingers - the one I loved the most is where he says, piercing the audience with his laser stare and looking as just as presidential as can be: "We Germans will not go down in history as genocidal maniacs! We. Will. Not!"
Man! What a documentary!
We could not have wished for anything more! This film is the opening salvo of what is going to become escalating Holocaust debate - the forensic substance is now on the table! We did not even dream that such a film was possible in 1999 and few of us thought so much suggestive, in-your-face imagery and sound bites would get past the censors.
And speaking of censors - there are, of course, in this film, too, the expected politically correct insertions. How else to market this movie? After all, Errol Morris is Jewish - and had to find a way to sell his film without being Leuchterized.
In this film, there are three authentic Holohuggers:
* There is Professor Roth, who testified under oath in 1988 in a
courtroom in Toronto that there was no Zyklon B in the brick and mortar pieces Fred brought back from Auschwitz. Incredibly and shamefully, he does a switcheroo. He says - and now get this! - that ***had he known where the samples came from***, the test results would have been different. Well, we believe him. Sure. Why not? After a decade of thinking it over, he has had Leuchter's experience to look back on - as an example of what happens to those who are unwilling to prostitute science. A man has got to eat.
* There is the shrill Shelly Shapiro, professional Holocaustonian, who
hounded Fred Leuchter inside and outside the courts in Massachussetts, who warns the audience not to be deceived: Fred is a "racist" and a "white supremacist" who is up to no good!
* Then there is Van Pelt, an academic from Canada, who wrote a book
about Auschwitz that pleased the Lobby mightily, as oily and as unctuous as any small-town minister, who oinks about the "sacredness" of Auschwitz, the "holy ground" defiled by the chiseling Leuchter. There is lots of theology and falsification of German language documents, but there is nothing new. Does he think he is the Pope - defending holy relics?
And that's just about it. The genouflecting done! The rest? You be the judge. The world will be the judge about this documentary. I think it is a masterpiece.
The end of the film shows Fred Leuchter, destroyed by the Holocaust Lobby - without a job, a family, evicted from a motel for non-payment after having been stiffed by a shady employer, walking the highway a non-person. Fred walks away a modern anti-hero, but not before he stated clearly that he is an American who believes in the merits of Freedom of Speech - and who believes that Mr. Zundel is entitled to have his say his way. The audience knows that what they saw was just one simple, honest man who paid the price for showing that he had a spine - for sticking up for truth. Throughout the film, Fred Leuchter never recants. The audience is treated to a rare sight in our days - an American who cannot be bought.
I feel a shiver moving up my spine as I am telling you that, when this movie ended, right there in the theatre in downtown Toronto, 500-plus young people stood in unison as if by command and gave this documentary, this story, this courageous producer, this moving, incredible drama A GENUINE STANDING OVATION.
And then, still silent and with thoughtful faces, they slowly filed out of the theatre into the bright Toronto sunshine. No one - not a single one! - hassled or insulted Ernst who stood there next to me, surrounded by his friends.
In 1996, when the great global cyber war broke out around the Zundelsite because I posted the best-selling booklet "Did Six Million Really Die?" - a Zundel watcher told me in an e-mail that he " had felt the planet lurch."
I say to you today that, for the second time, I felt the planet lurch.
This documentary will not convert the Holohuggers. The film gives them their platitudes.
It won't change even one Revisionist's belief, I am quite confident, because what Leuchter did has now been replicated by people like Lüftl, Germar Rudolf and even Polish scientists out of the Cracow Institute.
But it will awaken doubts in many and speak to the great masses - and it will do it in a way that ultimately will be in our favor and do our struggle proud.
Ingrid
Thought for the Day:
""What, then, might be the next chapter, the next step in the evolution of evil, if not Holocaust denial, a new demonically artful level of evil whose proponents find an ingenious way to murder the dead all over again?"
(Ron Rosenbaum, author of "Explaining Hitler" in a review tellingly titled "Errol Morris and the Tricky Art of Refuting Holocaust Denial" published in The New York Observer, September 13, 1999, page 27)