At the beginning of March, Ernst Zündel was deported back to Germany by the Canadian Government. This was the news that many nationalists and supporters of free speech had both feared and expected. In Germany, Zündel could face a prison sentence of up to 10 years, merely and solely for his opinions regarding the events of World War Two. He had left Germany as young man in September 1958, arriving in Canada with $200, a suitcase and a fishing rod. He was returning to a homeland that was very different to the one he left – a country with over 400,000 homeless, for example.

As most of these homeless are native Germans, they tend not to attract much help or attention, unlike the more favoured asylum-seekers. The German Government has also, over recent years, been able find the money to give a couple of new submarines to Israel, instead of helping its own aged and needy with cash.

Zündel had been held in Canadian jails for over two years under a particularly gruelling régime. For example, he was not permitted to spend one night in the dark during all that time, or allowed the use of a chair, clock or calendar. As a result of this harsh treatment – inflicted on the man just for his opinions and beliefs – Ernst Zündel has become visibly aged and careworn.

But the leading Canadian paper the Globe and Mail was – to say the least – not exactly sympathetic to Ernst during this ordeal. It commented in an editorial just days before his deportation that:

'Ernst Zündel is a despicable character who associates with even more despicable characters. He is a Holocaust-denier, an associate of white supremacists and, though he insists his wife holds the only password, the effective operator of a website that spews hateful material to the world.'

Journalists, of course, are often notoriously lazy, and here we see the clear evidence of over-reliance on distorted handouts from the Anti-Defamation League and other such bodies. Archived on the Zündelsite are contributions from such 'hateful' writers as Robert Fisk, Dr. Henry Makow (Jewish) and Elizabeth Corrie, mother of the murdered Rachel. Space has also been given to various other holocausts largely denied or ignored by the system media, such as Iraqi sanctions, what our own country did to the Boers in South Africa around 1900, or the Jenin massacre. Ernst Zündel's wife Ingrid also insists that she is more than willing to give space to contrary views. Despite the offer, most – maybe all – of Zündel's opponents seem to prefer to use the sledgehammer of a manipulated 'law' to reasoned argument.

Nor is Zündel an isolated figure. Chemist Germar Rudolf had to flee his post at the Max Planck Institute after coming up with 'unacceptable' research findings about the persistence of cyanide compounds, coming first to this country and then to the United States of America – from which state, like Zündel, he faces the distinct possibility of deportation back to Germany. Likewise, Jurgen Graf, the Swiss author of the banned book The Giant with Feet of Clay, only escaped jail by emigrating to Iran.

Widening credibility gap

The frantic nature of the coordinated, ruthless and desperate efforts made to silence such dissenters should give the open-minded a pause for thought. In recent years we have seen many untrue stories surface about Iraq: the non-existent 'Weapons of Mass-Destruction' and Saddam's giant 'human shredding machine' come to mind. Earlier than these bizarre fictions was the bogus tale of babies being flung out of incubators in Kuwait by Iraqi soldiers. So, it is reasonable to suggest that large chunks of allied propaganda about the alleged atrocities of an earlier conflict are not necessarily true.

Indeed Zündel denies nothing that is actually established, writing that:-

'The Second World War was a Holocaust for everyone in it. If we are to draw lessons from the Second World War, we must find out what led to this monstrous event. We must find out as people, as a planet, as human beings, what really happened. Because otherwise we might well overlook when real holocausts are planned in the future.'

Or equally correctly that:-

'It is absolutely true that Jews were incarcerated and often treated cruelly. They were seen as the enemy, just as in our times the "Nazis" are seen as the enemy of entrenched oligarchies.'

This was also the fate of second-generation Japanese in the United States, including old people and children, who were largely loyal to their adopted country. Even so, they finished up incarcerated in concentration camps in the Californian desert. In our own country, those who correctly foresaw and predicted that our involvement in World War II would lead to the ruin of Britain were also imprisoned, sometimes under conditions of half-starvation and terrified by threats of summary execution.

In more recent years, quite a few Britons have been subject to degradation and humiliation as a consequence of the economic failure induced by various incompetent or degenerate governments.

It is all very well to point to the photograph of the young lad in the Warsaw Ghetto with his hands up before German troops, but – as the captions sometimes truthfully admit – the boy pictured in Warsaw later became a successful London businessman. This is rather more than can be said for some Welsh or Yorkshire boys of the same age killed in accidents gathering spoil-heap coal for much-needed heat when the mining communities were closed down in our own dear Tory party's version of the Morgenthau Plan.

Even though National Socialist Germany was more or less founded on a concept of race, this does not necessarily prove genocidal intentions towards outsiders. Hitler's own chauffeur and 'old comrade' Emil Maurice, one of the founder members of the SS, is reliably rumoured to have been Jewish or part-Jewish. Also part-Jewish were numerous military men of the Third Reich, such as Luftwaffe General Wilberg and Admiral Bernhard Rogge, commander of the Atlantis and Prinz Eugen. Additionally, small numbers of Indians, blacks and so on, resided in Nazi Germany uninterned and unmolested.

So it can be seen, even from this brief overview, that the situation in wartime Germany was much more complex than the stark, black and white picture presented to us by the media and tame historians. Which side should be given credence: the one that wants debate and investigation, or the one that suppresses it with phalanxes of judges, lawyers, politicians and jailers?

'Threat to security'

It is difficult to decide what was the most disturbing feature of the Zündel case. Perhaps it was the blatant partiality of Justice Pierre Blais, who was surprised by the defence having a cosy chat with the State Prosecutor. But this is unsurprising as Blais is a former head of the Canadian SIS (equivalent to 'our' MI5). Justice Blais described Ernst Zündel as – wait for it – "not only a threat to Canada's national security but also a threat to the international community of nations." The judge's comments are of a piece with the supposed enormous 'global outrage' over Prince Harry's fancy dress! More rational people might see different, worthier candidates as a threat to "the international community of nations."

An even more disturbing aspect was the issuing of a so-called 'national security certificate' to ensure the deportation of a pacifist with no criminal record. As a result of this move, Ernst was denied even the right to see the evidence against him, always assuming that there was any real evidence against him.

This security certificate arrangement was rushed through the Canadian Parliament following the alleged Al Qaeda attacks on the US, and is supposedly an anti-terrorist measure. This is somewhat ironic when one considers that Zündel, so far from being a terrorist, was the near-victim of one of the few terrorist attacks ever on Canadian soil. Two Canadian cabinet ministers had to sign the certificate, so they must accounted as little more than hirelings of the 'special interests' that want to see Zündel silenced and behind bars for good.

Astonishingly, in spite of the punishing and exhausting 'third-degree' he has been compelled to endure, Ernst Zündel has managed to retain his capacity for trenchant analysis and astonishing sense. In a letter to a French friend,* written just before his deportation from Canada, he comments that:-

'It may well be that we are seeing and experiencing (Western civilization's) actual death throes by corruption, cynicism, and food- and drug-induced lethargy and self-centeredness – junk food of body, mind, and spirit. History records numerous collapses of civilizations, but none like ours... We will implode from within, for our version of the ancient Barbarians are not only long inside our gates, they run our media, our universities, our churches, our governments – they are, in fact, already the de facto governments in all but name!’

Zündel also puts his finger on the significance of his long running battle with the authorities:-

'My case is not only there to scare, frighten and dissuade other heretics and dissidents into compliance or silence; my case will be used as the precedent-setting case, now sanctioned by the courts of the U.S.A. and of Canada – and soon of Germany.'

Today it's Zündel, but tomorrow the 'freedom-takers' will have new targets, possibly including dissident anti-Zionist leftists, environmentalists or Arab groups. The law has been twisted and perverted in two countries – the U.S.A. and Canada – with two experienced immigration lawyers saying that they'd never seen anything like the procedure used to remove Ernst Zündel from the U.S.A.

In Canada the 'security certificate' was definitely misapplied, even if we generously assume that – like much of the legislation introduced after the possible, indeed probable, 'inside job' of 9/11 – that it was fair or just in the first place.

It is only right that the last word should go to Ernst himself, one victim of massive human rights violations and a politicised judicial process who still manages to remain philosophical: "I am sad but not heartbroken for I believe in a higher destiny. I was not meant to retire!"

Ernst Zündel can be contacted at:-