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March 7, 2005
American Dissident Voices
Broadcast of March 5, 2005
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Welcome to American Dissident Voices. I'm Kevin Alfred
Strom.
THERE ARE MANY STRANDS that make up the knot of tyranny
which increasingly binds the minds of men. But none are more obvious -- and
none are more odious -- than the cords that bind a man who will, in my
opinion, one day be regarded as one of the heroes of this age, Mr. Ernst
Zundel, late of Pigeon Forge, Tennessee and now of Mannheim prison in
Germany. Mr. Zundel was just shipped in chains to Germany after the most
shameful imaginable quasi-legal terrorism and sham proceedings by the
governments of the United States and Canada. The Star Chamber has returned
to North America. Mr. Zundel's "crime" is that of publicly
doubting what Jews say about World War II -- nothing more. All else is
pretext.
The "missed immigration hearing" was the Bush-neocon
administration's pretext to kidnap him and ship him from his home and hearth
and wife into Canada, where he was held in solitary confinement for two
years without charge and subjected to a secret trial under a
"judge" who once headed the secret police agency which knowingly
put him in mortal danger, probably hoping to kill him on orders of its
Jewish masters.
So now the Alice-in-Wonderland "ruling" has been
issued, and the innocent writer and thinker Ernst Zundel is in yet another
prison, now charged in Germany with doubting the extremely doubtful but
legally-protected story of the "Holocaust." So now the focus
shifts to Europe, where awareness of Jewish power is growing and yet also
where free speech is not a right and doubting the Jewish version of World
War II history is a crime.
To discuss this important event we have as our guest today
Mr.
Mark Weber, Director of the Institute for Historical Review.
Mr.
Weber is not only an historian, but he has served as the
Zundel family's American spokesman, giving many media interviews, organizing
protests and speaking events in the cause of freeing this innocent man.
Welcome to the program, Mark.
Mark Weber: Thank you very much, Kevin. It's a
pleasure to be on again.
KAS: Can you give us a brief synopsis of the events
beginning with the judge's "ruling" in Canada a few days ago?
MW: Well, the last several weeks have been dramatic.
It was on the 24th or 25th that Judge Blais handed down his long-awaited
decision on the accusation that Ernst Zundel is a "threat to national
security" -- which is fantastic, really. Ernst Zundel has been held for
two years in solitary confinement in Canadian detention on the charge that
he's a "threat to national security." Just about every neutral
observer of the scene rejects that as an empty pretext. It's amazing that in
the last several days even a number of journalists on national television
have stressed, admitted, or acknowledged, over and over, that this charge is
really preposterous.
In any case, Judge Blais handed down his ruling and declared
that Ernst Zundel is a "threat to national security." Now he did
so on the basis of evidence that no one can see. It seems to be based
entirely on who Ernst Zundel has met with and talked with over the past
several years, and he alleges that Ernst Zundel is a "central
figure" in a sinister network of right-wingers, nationalists, White
supremacists, and so forth. But no actual evidence of any wrongdoing or any
real threat was cited by the judge. And it only underscored the emptiness of
the pretext under which Ernst Zundel has been held.
Very shortly after Judge Blais issued this ruling, Ernst
Zundel was informed that he would be deported to Germany. He's a German
national, and although he had been living in Canada for more than 40 years,
for the last several years -- until he was incarcerated in Canada -- he had
been living in Tennessee with his wife. On the second of March, Ernst Zundel
was packed up, put on an airplane, and sent to Germany. And as we speak he's
now being held in a prison in Mannheim, Germany, and he has been charged
with violating that country's strange law which makes it a crime to
"deny the Holocaust," that is, to dispute the official version of
the fate of Europe's Jews during World War II.
It's unclear what will happen next, when there will be a
trial, and so forth.
One of the amazing facets of this whole thing is that before
he was deported from the United States two years ago, Ernst Zundel had been
living quietly in Tennessee with his wife, Ingrid Rimland. He's now become
far better known -- and his whole case has become far better known -- as a
result of his arrest in the United States, his deportation to Canada first
and now to Germany. The case has now become an international affair. Ernst
Zundel and his ordeal are now much better known that ever they were before
he was taken away in February 2003.
KAS: Indeed. How is Mrs. Zundel -- Ingrid Rimland
Zundel -- taking this?
MW: Well, I spoke with her just the other day. It's a
big blow, of course. She's afraid she'll never see her husband again.
As it happens, on the third of February, she and I spoke at
a meeting here in southern California organized by the IHR. This was the
first address that Ingrid had given to any audience about her husband's
ordeal, about the background of the whole thing, since he was taken away
from her in February of 2003. She talked about how, right after he was
arrested, it was a really great blow. She was very subdued and it was very
difficult. Then, of course, life picks up and a new pattern emerges. And she
has, with great fortitude, borne this tremendous burden that has fallen on
her shoulders, organizing this campaign for his release during the past
couple of years.
And when I spoke to her again just a few days ago, she was
of course very subdued again. It's a terrible blow, and she's afraid she'll
never see him again. She runs the risk, of course, even visiting him in
Germany, that she might be arrested herself and put in prison, because the
laws in Germany are very bizarre in this respect.
KAS: What a sad, sad situation for a married couple
to be in.
MW: It's a very very sad situation. There's a number
of aspects of this whole case that are really remarkable. Ernst Zundel was
arrested and taken away in Tennessee on the pretext that he had missed an
immigration hearing. He was held in Canada for two years in solitary
confinement on the empty pretext that he's a "threat to national
security." And now he's being held in Germany on the charge that he
"denies the Holocaust." In all three cases, the charges are empty
or they are political in nature or both.
But, no matter the character of the individual circumstances
in each case, they all point up the tremendous symbolic role that Ernst
Zundel has taken on.
It's important to stress that Ernst Zundel has been targeted
in this way not because of anything he's actually done. I mean, the charge
that he's a "threat to national security" is really preposterous
on its face, as even the leading newspaper in Canada, the Globe and Mail,
has on two occasions editorially affirmed. What's significant is that Ernst
Zundel fought a tremendous battle in the courts in the 1980s over the
Holocaust issue. He enormously publicized the entire Holocaust Revisionist
case of skepticism about the official Holocaust story. And I can attest
personally -- I've seen this myself -- that the Canadian Jewish groups and
the American Jewish groups absolutely hate this man and are determined to
put him away and shut him up any way they can.
KAS: Yes; when you strip away all the legal pretexts
and the sham moralizing it comes to down to a case of Jewish vengeance.
MW: A popular public affairs program in Canada called
The Michael Coren Show has dealt -- three or four times now in the last few
weeks -- with the Zundel case. And there's been unanimous agreement -- even
by the host of the show, who's Jewish, and the others who've been on the
show -- that Ernst Zundel is not a threat to national security. But one
guest in particular was emphatic in saying that Zundel is in prison because
Jewish groups want him in prison. This is a point which very few people are
willing to say openly, but which must be said.
If Ernst Zundel is not really a threat to national security,
then an immense injustice has been done to this man. He's been held for two
years, then, unjustly. He's a victim -- he's not a perpetrator -- he's a
victim of injustice. And the question
arises: Who are the perpetrators? -- and how can they be
held accountable for the injustice against him and against others like him?
KAS: Indeed. We must not forget that.
Is anyone able to speak with Mr. Zundel?
MW: Well, I don't know now what the situation is, how
freely he is able to speak. When he was in solitary confinement in Canada,
he was permitted to make collect telephone calls out, as long as the
authorities were notified in advance to whom he was calling.
As your listeners may know from previous broadcasts, he was
held under draconian conditions. The light was never turned off in his cell;
he was not permitted to have even a pen, he had to write with pencils; he
was not allowed to have a desk -- very draconian. I don't know now what the
situation is, but it's hard to imagine that circumstances that he will be
held under in Germany will be any worse than they were in Canada.
At least now he has the right to confront the evidence
against him, whatever it is, and to deal with it in a kind of normal way.
When someone is held in Canada or other countries under the
pretext of "national security," all the normal rules are thrown
out the window, and, as I mentioned, in Zundel's case in Canada he was not
permitted to confront or refute or respond to the supposed evidence that was
presented against him.
KAS: So this is not going to be a secret trial, as
was the one in Canada.
MW: Right. One of the remarkable aspects of the case
now in Germany is that Ernst Zundel has been charged with "Holocaust
denial" because of what's been posted on the so-called Zundelsite. (
<http://www.zundelsite.org/>http://www.zundelsite.org/ which is linked
to the Institute for Historical Review site, <http://www.ihr.org/>http://www.ihr.org/
) The Zundelsite contains quite a lot of material that is called
"Holocaust denial." But it's important to remember a couple of
things. First, the Web site, despite the name, is not really Ernst Zundel's
Web site. And that's not just a quibble. His wife runs the Web site. His
wife controls the Web site. Not only does Ernst Zundel not have access to it
-- he doesn't even know the password.
But the most obvious evidence that the site is not run by
Ernst Zundel is the fact that it's been running for two years while he's
been in solitary confinement in Canada.
Second, the Web site is based not in Germany or even in
Canada, but in the United States. And to punish a person for what is posted
on a Web site in another country -- where that material is legal -- opens up
a very dangerous door for abuse. Let us consider for a moment the
implications if that becomes the general principle. It could mean, for
example, that a Chinese person living in the United States who posts
something on an American Web site denouncing Communist rule in China, could
be punished and even extradited from the United States to China and punished
there for doing something that's quite legal in this country but illegal in
China. As everyone knows, there are laws all around the world that we in
America don't agree with -- in fact, there are laws in America that
Americans fifty years ago wouldn't have agreed with. So for a person to make
a statement on a Web site in a country where it's legal, and then have that
person punished in another country, is a very dangerous thing indeed.
KAS: There are some of your writings up on the
Zundelsite. And I know that there are some of mine there as well. Haven't
some of your writings there been the subject of legal proceedings?
MW: Right. Some essays that I've written, which are
posted on the IHR Web site, are also posted on the Zundelsite. And they've
been, under German law, "indexed." That means they're not exactly
banned, but there are certain restrictions on them. They're put in a
category in Germany similar to the category under which pornography is
placed.
And Jewish groups in Canada tried, after they were
unsuccessful in "getting" Zundel during the 1980s, to shut him up
and punish him for what appeared on the Zundelsite during the 1990s. This
was done before a quasi-legal body called the "Human Rights
Tribunal" and on two occasions I testified before this tribunal on
behalf of Ernst Zundel. And part of the reason I testified was, as you
mentioned, that some of the writings that were objected to were written by
me.
But the incredible thing is that these writings, because of
the court cases that Ernst Zundel fought in the 1980s, were legal in printed
form in Canada -- and are now legal in printed form in Canada -- but Jewish
organizations were trying to punish or shut up Ernst Zundel for these same
writings when they appeared on the Internet on the Zundelsite -- which, as I
said, is run by his wife and not by him and is based in the United States.
KAS: It sounds like the court of the Red Queen in
Alice in Wonderland.
MW: On the fourth of February we held a demonstration
outside the Canadian Consulate in downtown Los Angeles, and there were maybe
50 Los Angeles policemen in the middle of the street separating our
demonstration from the very raucous demonstration by the Jewish Defense
League on the other side of the street. I can say that one of the most
gratifying aspects of that demonstration was the support we got from people
who represent a whole range of political views. Ernst Zundel has become a
symbol -- a lightning rod -- a rallying point -- for people concerned about
the issue of freedom of speech. And it's very gratifying to see the kind of
support that he's gotten on this matter. By the same token, it really points
up the hypocrisy of these so-called defenders of free speech -- that they
have not supported Ernst Zundel in this because they do not want to be
associated with a person who holds these views on the Second World War and
so forth. But there's been a wide range of support -- and growing support
for Ernst Zundel the longer he was held.
The demonstration we held on the fourth of February was
coordinated with demonstrations in other American cities on that same day or
the next day, and also in Tokyo, in Stockholm, and in Canada as well. And I
just received a report that today, in Mannheim, Germany, there were forty to
fifty people demonstrating and distributing leaflets supporting Ernst
Zundel. Now it's hard to say what's going to happen, but there's every
prospect that the Zundel case will become an important case in Germany as
well.
KAS: Excellent. I'm glad to hear that.
Who has failed us in this regard? Who has failed us in
standing up for Ernst Zundel's freedom of speech? How about Amnesty
International?
MW: On just the immediate issue -- and this is a
point I made in my talk just a few weeks ago -- their behavior has been
hypocritical. Amnesty International, which is probably the most prestigious
international organization for political prisoners, has taken the view that
those people who are incarcerated or punished for free speech that is
labeled "hateful" don't deserve their support. Amnesty
International has shown its hypocrisy, and the limitations of its adherence
to its own principles, in the Zundel case.
But there's more than that. It's outrageous that the
American media have failed to publicize the Zundel case or to denounce the
treatment of Zundel fervently or in any really meaningful way.
It's really part of a larger problem. In a number of
European countries -- France, Germany, Switzerland, the Netherlands and so
forth -- it's a crime to dispute the official version of World War II
history about the Holocaust. My point is that it's a real failure that there
has not been more outrage about the very existence of these laws.
KAS: Yes.
MW: This is the only chapter of history that receives
this kind of judicial protection -- or, to put it another way, it's a form
of selective justice. And selective justice is not justice. It's a form of
injustice. And these laws exist because Jewish groups have agitated and
promoted and pushed for these laws. Because for Jewish groups, the Holocaust
story is a very very important pillar of their psychology, and of their
media and cultural role in our society. And anyone who pays even the
slightest attention realizes the extent to which the Holocaust has the kind
of iconic status it does in our society.
KAS: The Jewish power structure has been able to get
these laws enacted in many European countries, whereas they do not have
similar laws -- at least, not yet -- in the United States.
However, it's sort of ironic that in Europe there seems to
be a much greater awareness of Jewish power and the toxic nature of Jewish
power than there is in the United States. Do you think that this will be a
factor in how the Zundel case is seen in Europe?
MW: Well, I'm not as close as I'd like to be to the
situation in Europe. But there does seem to be a shift in Europe about a lot
of this. It's been 60 years now since the end of World War II in Europe, and
all of these kinds of laws and this kind of special emphasis on Jewish
suffering -- almost to the exclusion of, and certainly overshadowing, the
suffering of other peoples -- is pretty tiring to millions and millions of
people, not only in Europe but around the world. But it's put up with by a
lot of people who don't really care what the implications are and so forth.
I think it is harder and harder for a state -- Germany or
other states -- to justify putting people in jail for expressing a dissident
view about this one chapter in history, and yet not punishing people for
dissident views on other subjects. It's a violation of the proclaimed ideals
of democracy that these countries all claim to support.
KAS: Are these offenses under which Ernst Zundel is
now charged in Germany bailable offenses? I would think that they would be.
MW: In principle, yes. But Ernst Zundel is a special
case, for several reasons -- and not just because of his prominence. It's
also because he has no real residence in Germany. He hasn't lived in Germany
for 40 to 45 years. Normally bail is given when a person has a normal
residence in a place. It's fairly easy for the state prosecutor to argue
that he shouldn't be given bail on the basis that he's likely to leave the
country. Indeed, he wants to leave the country. He doesn't want to be there.
He was forced to be there. Normally, he might be given bail. But in this
particular situation, it's hard to see. It's also hard to see how the state
-- without looking ludicrous -- is going to try and enforce the law in this
case, given the fact that -- as I mentioned -- he's been in solitary
confinement for two years and can't control the Web site that's supposedly
the center of the offense.
***
Be sure to be with us when we continue this important
broadcast, "Zundel's Persecution: By Order of the Jews," next week
on American Dissident Voices.
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The text above is based on a broadcast of the American
Dissident Voices radio program sponsored by National Vanguard Books.
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Reminder:
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prison sketches - now on-line and highly popular - help pay for his defence.
Take a look - and tell a friend.
http://www.zundelsite.org/gallery/donations/index.html
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Please write to Ernst Zündel, let him know that he is not
alone:
Justizvollzuganstalt Mannheim
Herzogenriedstr. 111
D- 68169 Mannheim
Germany
Tel. 49+621 3980, extension 217.
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