The story of Fred Leuchter has been retold many times and is here summarized once more. Leuchter is one of the quiet heroes of his Herculean struggle to expose the Holocaust Bully for what he really is:
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The Story of Fred A. Leuchter, Jr. - Is It "Hate"?
The Canadian Human Rights Commission alleged that Fred A. Leuchter's essay "Inside the Auschwitz Gas Chambers", which described his investigation of the Auschwitz, Birkenau and Majdanek concentration camps and his findings with respect to the alleged homicidal gas chambers, was "hate".
Fred A. Leuchter had been hired by Ernst Zundel in the early months of 1988 to conduct a forensic examination of the alleged gas chamber sites at the Auschwitz, Birkenau and Majdanek concentration camps in Poland. He subsequently gave testimony at Zundel's trial on charges of spreading false news in the booklet "Did Six Million Really Die?." Leuchter concluded, based on chemical analysis of brick and mortar samples taken from the sites and from an inspection of the sites themselves, that they were not used and could never have been used as homicidal gas chambers.
The essay alleged to be "hate" by the Canadian Human Rights Commission was about six pages long and gave Leuchter's account of his investigation and findings. The Commission wanted an order against Zundel requiring him to "cease and desist" from publishing this "hate."
Yet this very same story of Fred Leuchter and his investigation of the camps was the subject in noted filmmaker Errol Morris' documentary, "Mr. Death: The Rise and Fall of Fred A. Leuchter Jr.". In the film, Leuchter described his trip to Poland, his examination of the concentration camps and his conclusions. He affirmed that he stood by his report on the gas chamber sites. The film featured interviews with Ernst Zundel and David Irving and described the persecution which Leuchter subsequently suffered because of his report and testimony at the Zundel trial.
"Mr. Death" was shown at numerous film festivals around the world to rave reviews and was released in the general theatres in 1999 and 2000. It played in Toronto theatres for months and received extensive favorable media reviews in the Toronto press. It was later aired across Canada and the United States on television.
An Internet website at www.mrdeath.net told viewers who Fred A. Leuchter was, described the controversy surrounding his findings at the concentration camps, profiled the various people who appeared in the film, including Ernst Zundel, and invited discussion about the film in a section called "What Do You Think?."
Reviewers described it as "one of the year's best films", "a truly great film," "brilliant", "a stunning achievement" and "provocative." Well-known film reviewer Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times gave it a four star rating. No one ever described the film as "hate" yet the film told the very story of Fred Leuchter's examination of the concentration camps and his findings regarding the gas chambers that the Canadian Human Rights Commission condemned as "hate."
The anti-German double standard was again evident: the Jewish director Errol Morris was described as "brilliant" for producing a one and a half hour documentary film in which Fred Leuchter related the story of his investigation of the gas chambers at Auschwitz and Majdanek and concluded that no homicidal gassings ever occurred there. But it was "hate" if the "Zundelsite" produced at 6 page essay in which Leuchter described the very same events.
Use of Term "Holocaust Lobby" or "Holocaust Industry" - Is It "Hate"?
The Commission alleged that the very use of the terms "Holocaust industry" and "Holocaust lobby" exposed Jews to hatred and contempt. It relied in particular on passages from the Zundelsite such as the following:
"To claim that World War II was fought by the Germans, as the Holocaust Lobby incessantly claims, just to kill off the Jews as a group, is a deliberately planned, systematic deception amounting to financial, political, emotional and spiritual extortion. The "Holocaust", first sold as a tragedy, has over time deteriorated into a racket cloaked in the tenets of a new temporal religion - replete with martyrs to the Faith, holy shrines, high priests like Wiesel and Goldhagen, and theologians of the Faith such as Raul Hilberg, Deborah Lipstadt et al."
To support this allegation it relied on the evidence of Dr. Gary Prideaux, who testified that "Holocaust Lobby" was synonymous with Jews as an identifiable group. To this group, said Prideaux, Zundel had attributed negative characteristics including things "like criminality, manipulativeness, extortion, in some cases, even making threats to them."
In explaining why these terms were hatefeul, Prideaux's brief to the Tribunal stated:
"The expression Holocaust Lobby entails a implicit meaning that (1) such a well-defined group exists and (2) that it is constituted of those, including Jews, who advocate the existence of the Holocaust. Jews, as members of the Holocaust Lobby, have predicated of them such properties as deception and financial, political, emotional and spiritual extortion. This collocation of expressions and association of terms implies the covert assertion that Jews as a group are deceives and extortionists." - "The second sentence of the quote contains a passive relative clause associated with the subject NP the 'Holocaust', namely fist sold as a tragedy. Such passive structures without overt agent NPs are used when the agent is either shared (given) information or is understood pragmatically from the context. By the principles of topic continuity and the maxim of relevance, the understood agent in this case is the NP the Holocaust Lobby, which was introduced in the previous sentence. The expression 'Holocaust' is placed in scare quotes, signalling the writer's sceptical (sic) attitude toward the word."
Prideaux also extended his analyses to the term "Holocaust Industry", particularly in the Zundelsite sentence: "the 'Holocaust extortion industry." Wrote Prideaux:
"The writer's attitude that this activity is illegal or illicit is reflected by the use of the negative term extortion to modify industry. The term industry itself evokes a commercial, bureaucratic, production-line set of associations. Moreover, the term industry when associated with Holocaust also evokes the dispassionate business-like aspects of the Final Solution in Nazi German. (sic) The term Holocaust Industry, like the term Holocaust Lobby discussed earlier, serves as a negative epithet for Jews. The writer asserts a disbelief in the Holocaust and asserts the intention to expose its untruth."
In reply to this testimony, the Zundel defence filed with the Tribunal two large binders of newspaper and magazine articles going back to 1980 in which the term "Holocaust Industry," "Shoah Business" and "Holocaust Shakedown" had been used, often by Jewish authors, to describe those groups and persons who had made the "The Holocaust" their trademark and their business. The term had not been used as a term of praise or approval.
Zundel's evidence showed that the manipulation and abuse of the history of the Jews during World War II had become known quite generally in the mainstream and Jewish media as a "business", an "industry" and in many cases had been harshly criticized. This criticism had increased in severity and intensity with the publication of Peter Novick's "The Holocaust in American Life" and Professor Norman Finkelstein's book, "The Holocaust Industry."
As early as 1980, the New York Times ran an article headlined "New Debate on the Holocaust" by Paula E. Hyman, a teacher of Jewish history at Columbia University in which she wrote:
"In an era when resources have to be carefully budgeted, some critics of the growing 'Holocaust industry' also question the allocation of sizable sums to the creation of new Holocaust centers in universities and communities throughout the country."
"With regard to Israel, the Holocaust may be used to forestall political criticism and suppress debate; it reinforces the sense of Jews as an eternally beleaguered people who can rely for their defense only upon themselves. The invocation of the suffering endured by the Jews under the Nazis often takes the place of rational argument, and is expected to convince doubters of the legitimacy of current Israeli Government policy."
In 1991 the Washington Times newspaper commentary section published an article by Jerome A. Brentar that stated:
"What in fact really worries the Nazi hunters is that time is running out on their lucrative 'big business' Holocaust industry and, of course, all this on taxpayers' dollars. Great Britain's distinguished Chief Rabbi Sir Immanuel Jakobovitz, a member of Britain's parliament, has publicly lamented the fact that the Holocaust has degenerated into a lucrative 'big business' industry that has enriched politicians, writers, lawyers, museum builders, theologians, etc., and even rabbis. His remarkably candid indictment of the Holocaust industry was revealed in an interview published in the Jerusalem Post of Nov. 26, 1987."
In the well-known Kirkus Reviews in 1995, in a review of James Sloan's "Jerzy Kosinski: A Biography", the reviewer asked: "Was Jerzy Kosinski a spy? Did he fabricate a childhood for himself in order to cash in on the Holocaust industry? Did he even write his own books?"
In 1998, the Jewish author Alfred M. Lilienthal in an article entitled "What Price Holocaustomania? The Spector of Hitler That Drives Washington's 'Israel First' Mideast Policy", wrote:
"Through the near-total Zionist control over Hollywood, the television networks and the printed media, this obsession is forever kept alive. Thus we have 'Exodus,' 'Schindler's List,' and tens of thousands of visitors pouring into the Holocaust Museum in Washington and other Holocaust centers around the country."
In 1998, the New York Times reported on the controversy over the remarks of Martin Walser, a prominent German writer, which he made during an acceptance speech for Germany's top literary award. Walser stated that Auschwitz should not become "a 'routine threat, a tool of intimidation, a moral cudgel or just a compulsory exercise.'" He complained of the "political instrumentalization" of the Holocaust and a "Holocaust industry."
In 1998, Charles Krauthammer, in a widely published and discussed column, denounced the "Holocaust Treasure Hunt", writing that "the pursuit of billions in Holocaust guilt money has gone from the unseemly to the disgraceful. What began as an attempt to locate actual confiscated Swiss bank accounts of individual Holocaust victims has turned into a treasure hunt for hungry tort lawyers and major Jewish organizations." Krauthammer quoted Abe Foxman of the Anti-Defamation League that the affair was becoming "an industry to be made on the memory of the victims." Asked Krauthammer: "Is that what honoring the Holocaust has come to? A shakedown of Swiss banks, Austrian industry, German auto makers -- the list grows daily -- that recalls the worst of racial hustling and class-action opportunism in the United States?" He warned that what was happening would revive "Shylockian stereotypes" and "anti-Jewish feeling."
In 1999, in the Jewish World Review, Susan Schlussel demanded a stop to what she called the "Holocaust obsession." Wrote Schlussel: "Today the Holocaust is big business with a complete product line. There are more people getting jobs based on the Holocaust. There are more lawyers filing lawsuits based on the Holocaust. And there are more films on the Holocaust." She called it a "sick obsession" and stated: "Unfortunately, like some industries, the Holocaust has become a promising career path. There are people running a plethora of Holocaust organizations and foundations. They get grants and raise money in fundraising letters, so that 'we will never forget.' There are a lot of careers built on this Holocaust Business."
In 1999, in the Baltimore Jewish Times, in an article headlined "Shoah Business: Will the last word on the Holocaust be money?", author James D. Besser worried that the whole restitution effort was starting to look "like an international shakedown."
In 2000, The Times of London reported:
"The Holocaust has become the stuff of Hollywood blockbusters. In the words of a Jewish American double-act tired of the booming Holocaust industry: 'There's no business like Shoah business.'"
In 2000 Geoffrey Wheatcroft wrote a lengthy article on "Holocaust chic" in the London Guardian, criticising the "Holocaust Industry." He wrote:
"To skeptics, all of this is 'the Holocaust industry,' or Holocaust chic, or even 'Shoah business' (there's no business like -). Those are harsh phrases, but not unjust when one thinks of the worst examples."
Wheatcroft went to write that such prominent Jews as Isaiah Berlin and Chaim Bermant despised the "Holocaust industry" and that author Primo Levi deplored the very word "Holocaust."
In 2000, a New York Times article headlined "In Germany, Getting Together is Hard to Do," author Roger Cohen stated: "Even in the west, there are signs of conservative intellectual stirrings among people eager to rediscover a German patriotism, tired of what they regard as the blackmailing of an American-dominated 'Holocaust industry', convinced that Germany has paid and done enough to atone."
And in July of 2000, Professor Norman Finkelstein of City University of New York published his book "The Holocaust Industry", a scathing attack on what he called the shakedown and blackmail of European countries by what he termed "The Holocaust Industry."
The book caused a storm of debate, discussion and controversy in Europe and in the United States. Virtually hundreds of media articles, radio and panel discussions on national television and the Internet in England, Germany and elsewhere were published and broadcast concerning the book, all of which discussed the central thesis of Finkelstein: that a Holocaust Industry existed, that it was involved in blackmail and extortion of European companies and countries and was fomenting anti-Semitism as a result. The book catapulted to the top ten bestseller list on Amazon.com, the Internet bookstore, in Germany, Switzerland and various Arab countries. Translations into eleven languages ensued. By February of 2001, over 50,000 copies of the book had been sold in Germany alone. The London Telegraph (February 18, 2001) reported that publication of Finkelstein's book coincided with an opinion poll showing that 65 per cent of Germans "totally or partially agreed with Finkelstein's assertion that 'Jewish organizations make exaggerated compensation demands on Germany to enrich themselves.'" The Zundel defense filed with the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal only a sample of these articles in a bound book of almost 300 pages.
Finkelstein used much the same terminology and came to the same conclusions as the documents on the Zundelsite which formed the basis of the complaint against Zundel. At times, when those documents were placed next to that of Prof. Finkelstein's, it was difficult to know which was which. Was it the Zundelsite? Or was it Finkelstein?
Examples:
Indeed, The Holocaust has proven to be an indispensable ideological weapon. Through its deployment, one of the world's most formidable military powers, with a horrendous human rights record, has cast itself as a 'victim' state, and the most successful ethnic group in the United States has likewise acquired victim status. Considerable dividends accrue from this specious victimhood -- in particular, immunity to criticism, however justified. (Finkelstein, p 3)
"Should we succeed in exposing the Holocaust and its spin-off industries, it will lay bare a criminal conspiracy of such parasitic nature and global reach involving entire nations, branches of governments etc. that it will cast dark shadows on some of the most revered public figures in America, Germany, Israel and elsewhere. That's why doubting Holocaust scholars and just ordinary Revisionists are being so mercilessly persecuted around the world. The issue of the Holocaust has long, long ago ceased to be a matter of individual and collective Jewish suffering or of economic and human rights injustices done to some Jews over 50 years ago. It has become a quasi-criminal enterprise, an octopus-like industry with its own lobby, promoters, legal arm, public relations branch and even enforcers." (Zundel, Power Letter, July 1995)
"Germany is right to reject the use of the Nazi Holocaust as a weapon for political and economic gain. The Holocaust has long since ceased to be a source of moral and historical enlightenment. It has become a straight-out extortion racket." (Finkelstein, New York Times, February 8, 2001)
"To claim that World War II was fought by the Germans, as the Holocaust Lobby incessantly claims, to kill off the Jews as a group, is a deliberately planned, systematic deception amounting to financial, political, emotional and spiritual extortion. The 'Holocaust', first sold as a tragedy, has over time deteriorated into a racket cloaked in the tenets of a new State religion. It is high time to subject the 'Holocaust' to public scrutiny - like any other historical issue." (Zundelsite Mission Statement)
"In recent years, the Holocaust industry as become an outright extortion racket. Purporting to represent all of world Jewry, living and dead, it is laying claim to Holocaust-era Jewish assets throughout Europe. Fittingly dubbed the 'last chapter of The Holocaust,' this double shakedown of European countries as well as legitimate Jewish claimants first targeted Switzerland." (Finkelstein, p. 89)
"The Swiss ruling elite, with a few notable exceptions, has predictably caved in to the worldwide Holocaust Lobby pressure and announced their fatal error -- a $6 Billion Holocaust Victims' Fund. The Holocaust terrorists are crowing triumphantly! The eternal parasite, riding high on a wave of victimhood, seems to have cast all caution to the wind, drunk with the feeling of influence and power of having brought yet one more gentile country to its knees. [...] Where will this end? I fear for the 'little Jew' who has no voice and no say in this matter, but ultimately will have to suffer the fallout!" (Zundel, Power Letter March 1997)
"The shakedown of Switzerland and Germany has been only a prelude to the grand finale: the shakedown of Eastern Europe. With the collapse of the Soviet bloc, alluring prospects opened up in the former heartland of European Jewry. Cloaking itself in the sanctimonious mantle of 'needy Holocaust victims', the Holocaust industry has sought to extort billions of dollars from these already impoverished countries. Pursuing this end with reckless and ruthless abandon, it has become the main fomenter of anti-Semitism in Europe." (Finkelstein, p. 130)
Public opinion has so far not been averse to the blackmailing of Swiss bankers and German industrialists, but it might look less kindly on the blackmailing of starving Polish peasants. (Finkelstein, p. 130-1)
In 2001, Finkelstein's book was published in Germany to great controversy. At a packed press conference in Germany he reiterated his determination to put "the Holocaust industry out of business."
Reviewers of the Finkelstein book called it "explosive", "bitterly angry", "shrill hyperbole," "controversial," a "distortion of history," "a short, sharp, copiously noted polemic," "bad history, distorted history," and "a sudden gust of fresh air." But the book was never denounced as "hate" except by one man, Elie Wiesel, a man severely criticised by Finkelstein, who stated that although he had not read the book he knew it was written by a man "carried by hate and hate distorts truth."
But Finkelstein was not the only Jew to denounce the Holocaust Industry. John Podhoretz in an article headlined "Crimes of the Holocaustologians" published in the New York Post on April 21, 1999 critically examined the rise of the Holocaust careerists and their refusal to tolerate any criticism. He wrote:
"In 1977, the Israeli scholar Yehuda Bauer offered a heartfelt warning 'against the creation of 'Holocaustology' and the careerism of 'Holocaustologians.'... In the past 20 years, Holocaust studies has become a glamorous and exciting field for American academics, as money from Steven Spielberg and others earmarked for Holocaust studies is flowing like cheap wine all across the world. The Holocaust, the most unspeakable event of the modern age, has become a career for some folks -- the source of their livelihoods. Now Bauer's fears are being realized, because Holocaustologians have decided they are beyond reproach and that anyone who dares utter a word of criticism against them is essentially guilty of an intellectual crime against humanity....They now equate the field of Holocaust studies with the Holocaust itself. Thus, any effort to question Holocaust studies is itself a form of Holocaust denial in their eyes."
Ernst Zundel was a courageous prophet who blew the whistle years ago on the racket known as the "Holocaust." Because he was German he was reviled, his career as a graphic artist destroyed, his house firebombed. He was subjected from 1980 onward to legal persecutions and harassment under various Canadian statutes including the Canada Post Corporations Act, the Criminal Code and the Canadian Human Rights Act. He was banned from using the Canadian mail system for a year. He was beaten on the steps of Canadian courthouses, his house beset by Jewish demonstrators, Marxists and anarchists screaming "Burn, Zundel, burn!." When his house was burned by an arsonist in 1995, the media were gleeful. When he attempted to warn Canadians about the loss of their freedoms under "human rights" laws in a press conference on Parliament Hill, he was banned from the precincts of Parliament by the unanimous vote of all Canadian political parties. When Zundel appealed this latest outrage, the ban incredibly was upheld by every level of Canadian courts right up to the Supreme Court of Canada.
There is no doubt that Zundel was being persecuted, not because of what he said, but because of who he was -- a German fighting for the truth about his people's history, exercising his fundamental human right of defending himself and his ethnic group against group libel and slander.
Allegations of Criminality Such as "Extortion" and "Blackmail" - Is It "Hate"?
The Canadian Human Rights Commission alleged that Zundel was exposing Jews to hatred because he was accusing the Holocaust Lobby of blackmail and extortion.
Throughout discussions about the "Holocaust Industry" since 1980, the subtext had always been that the events of World War II were being exploited for gain by the people and groups that comprised "The Industry" or the "Holocaust Business" as one writer termed it. The manipulation, it had been alleged, had reached the point of extortion and blackmail. Zundel was only one voice who had made this allegation. Another significant voice was, of course, Prof. Norman Finkelstein, who was himself Jewish.
Zundel and Prof. Finkelstein were not the only people to use the terms "extortion" and "blackmail" in connection with actions taken by the Holocaust Industry or Holocaust Lobby. In reply to the accusation of the Canadian Human Rights Commission, the Zundel defence filed at the hearing a large binder entitled "Holocaust 'Blackmail' 'Extortion'" which reproduced numerous newspaper articles in which prominent individuals made the allegation that the manipulation of the Holocaust had escalated into blackmail and extortion:
Swiss President Jean-Pascal Delamuraz dismissed as "blackmail" calls for Switzerland to set up a compensation fund for Jews who might be entitled to money left in Swiss banks after World War II. He was quoted as saying: "This is nothing less than extortion and blackmail." (Toronto Star, January 1, 1997)
A poll taken in Switzerland on January 11, 1997 found that the majority of Swiss backed Delamuraz's remarks on blackmail. (AP Worldstream, January 11, 1997) but after a threatened boycott of Swiss banks by Jewish groups, Delamuraz was forced to apologize (January 15, 1997)
In 1998, Jean-Francois Bergier, the head of an independent commission examining Switzerland's ties with the Nazis stated that most people in Switzerland would now agree with what Delamuraz had said (AAP Newsfeed, April 5, 1998)
In 1998, an official of the European Jewish Congress, Michael Kohn, was dropped from the organization after suggesting that the World Jewish Congress was blackmailing Swiss banks. In reporting this story, the Jerusalem Post stated that Kohn's statement represented a widely held view, but "one that has been taboo" since Delamuraz made the same accusation (Jerusalem Post, May 14, 1998)
In July of 1998, the Swiss People's Party described threats by New York state and city officials to impose sanctions against Swiss banks over Holocaust dealings as "extortion" (AP Worldstream, July 2, 1998)
Ordinary Swiss believed that what the Jewish organizations had done to their country was "blackmail" (Los Angeles Times, September 29, 1998)
Iranian newspapers said the Holocaust was a fraud that Israel was using to blackmail European governments (Agence France Presse, May 14, 2000)
The Syrian newspaper Tishrin published editorials stating that Zionist organizations were using the Holocaust myth to blackmail Germany and other European nations for tens of billions of dollars and to terrorize its intellectuals and statesmen (BBC Worldwide Monitoring, February 1, 2000; The Jerusalem Post, February 1, 2000)
The Syria Times in September of 2000 published an article accusing the Zionists of inventing the Holocaust myth and using it to blackmail the world (Syria Times, September 6, 2000; reported on by Jerusalem Post, September 7, 2000)
Jerusalem's top Muslim leader said that the Holocaust was exaggerated and used by Israel for political gain and blackmail. He made this statement shortly before meeting with Pope John Paul II (Toronto Star, March 26, 2000)
Raul Hilberg, prominent historian of the Holocaust, accused the World Jewish Congress of using blackmail to force Swiss banks into paying compensation (Deutsche Press-Agentur, January 28, 1999) He repeated this to newspapers in Austria, Israel and Switizerland and in an interview published in Berliner Zeitung, September 4, 2000)
The Canadian Human Rights Commission wished to single out Zundel for making the same allegations that important political, religious and intellectual leaders and commentators worldwide had made against what was now routinely called "The Holocaust Industry." Namely, that it was involved in extortion and blackmail of billions of dollars in what amounted to a shakedown of European countries and companies using inflated claims figures and ever increasing numbers of Holocaust survivors as Finkelstein pointed out. The Commission alleged, notwithstanding, that ordinary readers could read the same allegations in major newspapers over breakfast, but somehow they would immediately start to hate Jews if they happened to log onto the Zundelsite and read the same thing.
The allegation was absurd.
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Tomorrow: Conclusion
Thought for the Day:
"The 'Holocaust' must be investigated as thoroughly and as independently as Ken Starr's office investigated the allegations against President Clinton."
(Letter to the Zundelsite)