Sept 9, 2003
ZGram - Where Truth is Destiny
This is Part II of the Zundel=Refusenik Ad Saga:
Yesterday's ZGram told how I tried to run the same ad back-to-back in
Washington, DC and in Moscow - and how the American Ad was heavily censored
and truncated, whereas the Russian ad was not.
Here is the Russian ad that run under the title "American Plank Bed.
Story of American Refusenik"
[START]
There are a thousand hacking at the branches to one who is
striking at its roots. (Henry David Thoreau, 1817-1862)
An American Refusenik Story
Herewith I alert the Russian people and, specifically, the
Russian leadership to one of the most dictatorial events that happened in
America. It is an intensely personal story.
For three years, I was happily married to a kind, gentle man
with politically incorrect views - until, in broad daylight on American
soil, my husband was brutally kidnapped by agents of the American government
and taken away in leg irons.
The claim is that my husband was "deported"
because he "overstayed his visa" We have the evidence to prove
this allegation is untrue. We intend to prove in court that American law
enforcement agencies were used unwittingly as opportune "enforcement
squads" for a nasty political lobby with an agenda of muzzling free
speech.
Brief Background Information
I am a United States citizen, of German background, born in
the Ukraine, having lived in the U.S. since 1967. My husband, Ernst Zündel,
is a high-profile activist best known for various highly publicized Free
Speech Holocaust trials in several countries. For decades, Ernst Zundel has
fought for his right to challenge the orthodox Holocaust tale, which claims
relentlessly the "gassing of six million Jews", allowing no
debate.
Ask yourself this: Who is powerful enough to dictate what
shall be heard or not heard, spoken or not spoken, written or not written?
Truth does not fear investigation. A lie must be investigated and disarmed.
To accept without doubt, to accuse without trustworthy
evidence, to intimidate without proof, to lie without punishment, to censor
with impunity was unthinkable in the Western democracies in ages past. In
the case of the "Holocaust", the "murder weapon" is
missing, Jewish casualty numbers are highly inflated, and the tales of the
"witnesses" are unverifiable and often grossly bizarre. For
instance, Elie Wiesel, by universal acclaim a remarkable Holocaust Survivor
deserving of the Nobel Prize, wrote this:
"I learn from a witness that, for month after month,
the ground [of an alleged Jewish mass grave at Babi Yar in the Ukraine]
never stopped trembling; and that, from time to time, geysers of blood
spurted from it." ( Paroles d'étranger, Editions du Seuil, 1982, p.
86.)
In practically all Western countries, self-serving
fictionalizing about the Holocaust proceeds untouched by common sense and
forensically verifiable science. Why? It is really very simple: Certain
enormously powerful interests, Jews and non-Jews alike, benefit handsomely
from a simplistic view of history nobody is allowed to question - especially
since taxpayers are willingly footing the bill.
World-wide, the "Holocaust" has grown into a
secular religion. To question the new dogma makes one a heretic, subject to
vicious persecution and even prosecution. Russian-born Israel Shamir, a
noted Israeli journalist and courageous critic of the current Israeli
government, defined the problem well: "...the Holocaust is not a Jewish
religion; it is a religion par excellence for goyim" - a disrespectful
Hebrew word for non-Jews.
The 'Holocaust' must be examined, and questions must be
asked. It is not un-American to want to know the facts and to make known
those facts, once found and carefully examined.
Ernst Zündel did just that - for decades! As a German
descendant, Ernst Zündel refuses to live on his knees. For his responsible
activism on behalf of his forebears' maligned generation, he has been
targeted for assassination - twice by parcel bomb, once by arson, and once
by a young woman posing as a journalist who was put on an airplane to Israel
by Canadian authorities before she could do mischief with a microphone
disguising a gun.
Because of his insistence to check out the
"Holocaust" claims, Ernst Zundel has made powerful political
enemies at the highest levels of governments in various Western countries.
Follow what happened recently:
ERNST ZUNDEL - PRISON MEMOIRS
FEBRUARY 5 - FEBRUARY 19, 2003
I lived for more than 40 years in Canada. After my marriage
to Ingrid, I had applied for my papers so I could live with her in
Tennessee. My application had been accepted by Immigration authorities. I
had been fingerprinted, given a work permit, a social security number, a
medical. I was waiting for an interview with Immigration officials which I
understood to be the last step before being granted permanent resident
status. Since our first interview had to be canceled due to a time schedule
conflict, our attorney requested a new date. We have in our possession a
return receipt that our request to be re-scheduled had been received by INS.
We waited for that interview in the belief that we had done
everything we knew how to do, according to government regulations. In our
lawyer's opinion, the overwhelmed Immigration and Naturalization Service
checking into thousands of illegal immigrants in the United States simply
had not come around to looking at the file of two pension-aged Whites
setting up residence in Tennessee and bothering no one. We had purchased an
art gallery and planned to open it in weeks. One of my handymen was helping
me frame some of my water colors, oils and line drawings which I intended to
hang that very afternoon. All this came to an abrupt end when a virtual
posse of police cruisers and paddy wagons materialized in our driveway at
about 11:00 a.m., February 5, 2003.
I was dressed in my work outfit, blue jeans, mountain hiking
boots, colorful carpenter's suspenders and casual flannel shirt. I inquired
what brought them there as they surrounded me menacingly. They told me to
put my hands on the hood of a truck in the driveway. They said that they
were Immigration Service Enforcement Officers who had come to take me into
custody because I had failed to keep a court date.
There was no "court date" that we knew of. We were
waiting to be notified of our re-scheduled interview. I was stunned - as was
Ingrid. The five officers had no arrest warrant. I asked to call my
attorney. The request was denied. Ingrid, too, was told no call to our
attorney was allowed. I asked Ingrid to get my jacket, passport and
medication, since I was not permitted to go back into the house. Ingrid was
later told that this was deemed to have been a "civil" arrest and
no arrest warrant was needed. There was nothing "civil" about this
arrest!
Within minutes, I was in handcuffs and leg irons in a prison
van, escorted in a police convoy down our mountain road, past our art
gallery, into our little town where Ingrid and I did our shopping, and onto
highway I-40 to the Knoxville Immigration Office, where I was processed,
finger printed, and photographed. A Polaroid photo was taken of me against
the wall of some garage, part of a hollow block-type building. This photo
was then trimmed and later on stapled onto a document. I was given some
documents to sign, which were lying on the desk of one of the bureaucrats
when I came in. They had yellow post-it notes, and one clearly said in
someone's handwriting, "Add today's date here". One Immigration
officer, not directly involved in my case, had his wall decorated with a 2 x
4-foot large Israeli flag. Needless to say, I found this somewhat of an odd
wall decoration in a U.S. Immigration Office!
I was then put again into a prison van in handcuffs and leg
irons and driven for approximately 1 1/4 to 1 1/2 hours through heavy
traffic from Knoxville to a nearby jail, a cold, unfriendly place. The
processing there took over four hours. I was kept in an ice-cold,
all-concrete holding cell - even the seats and floors were concrete - until
well after midnight. The medication I had brought with me to jail was
disallowed. As a result, my blood pressure began to act up. I was told by
the nurses, to whom I was taken - still in handcuffs and leg irons - that it
was dangerously high.
I was housed in a two-man cell, in 24-hour lockup, only
allowed a brief shower after two to three days and a short call to Ingrid -
I don't remember when. My cell-mate was an engineer in chemistry, a manic
depressive who hallucinated, talked to unseen people all day and jumped up
and down and out of bed all night long, hollering orders to persons unseen,
thinking he was in charge of the CIA and talking loudly to "the
President" on his make-believe telephone. He smelled awful, obviously
not having showered in weeks. He annoyed the guards repeatedly in the middle
of the night by using the in-cell intercom. Finally, the guards came, six or
seven of them, and told me to get off my top bunk, grab my mattress and
sheets and get out of the cell. I stood in the hallway where I heard
hollering, screaming, and punching. I saw blood squirting against the wall
as my crazy cell-mate was dragged on one leg across the floor into a
different area of the prison. I saw him a few days later. He was bruised,
all black and blue over his eyes and head as guards led him past me from the
doctor's office.
I was put into a two-man cell with a gentle, soft-spoken
65-year-old barber who had tried to shoot his mother. He was kind and
helpful to me. I was now briefly with the general population, half Black,
Mexican and Indian, the rest being Whites, mainly from the Smoky Mountain
area. Most were hardened criminals, murderers, bank robbers, car thieves.
Almost all were repeat offenders. Many had 25-to 30-year sentences. There
was anger, frustration and rage in that place that was palpable.
Guards were unfriendly, cold, abrupt. One guard woke me up
in the middle of the night by poking me into the ribs with a flashlight
because I had left a book on the window sill.
Come Sunday, I heard dogs barking. We were all ordered into
our cells while black-uniformed SWAT teams with dogs went systematically
from cell to cell, threw us on the floor face down, hand-cuffed, arms
twisted behind our backs. They dragged us outside the cells like sacks of
potatoes while helmeted, visored, New World Order-type cops hollered
commands at us. They searched our pockets, beds and plastic bins. The dogs,
dripping saliva from their snapping jaws, were mainly Dobermans and German
Shepherds and were kept on chain leashes two feet away from our bodies and
faces. Young, pretty women in skin-tight uniforms and tightly-fitting flak
jackets, all black in color, kept climbing over the men who were curled up,
face down, shaking, frightened out of their wits. Some had tears streaming
down their faces. The women filmed these hapless prisoners with
mini-camcorders close up, laughing and joking, having themselves a ball. Why
were those videos taken?
I was there on two weekends, and this terrorizing of the
prisoners happened on both weekends. I was lucky to miss it the second time
because my American attorney, whom Ingrid had in the meantime engaged, had
come to see me and I was in the visitor meeting area of the prison. He had
found out by the grapevine that I was going to be deported from the USA to
Germany where I was born, even though I lived in Canada for over four
decades.
This lawyer filed a request with the District Court that I
be permitted to see a judge to tell him what happened - a request that was
denied the same day. We challenged that decision the very next day in the
Cincinnati Sixth Circuit Court where a law suit is still pending. According
to procedural court rules, I should not have been taken out of that prison
and deported without having seen a judge - yet that is exactly what happened
a few night later, February 17, 2003 - a national holiday in America,
"President's Day".
I was awakened by pounding on my cell door at 2:30 a.m. and
told to get ready. By 4:30 a.m., the guards came to get me for
"processing out". I was given a shower, ice cold, and changed back
into my civilian clothing. Because of the holiday, the guards could not let
me have my medication and the U.S. $400 I had brought with me to prison. To
this day, that money has not been returned.
I was taken to the Knoxville Airport without a single cent
in my pocket and without my medication. We boarded a plane to Atlanta,
Georgia shortly after 7:00 a.m., landing there after 9:00 a.m. I was not
told where we were going, but I saw a sign at the airline counter: Buffalo,
New York. I realized they were shipping me to Canada, not to Germany.
I had had no opportunity to let Ingrid know where I was and
what was happening to me. To this day, not one agency has contacted Ingrid -
either by phone, letter or visit -explaining, much less justifying the
arrest.
We arrived in Buffalo, New York at 11:30 a.m. in a bad
snowstorm. There I was told I was banned from the United States for 20
years, which meant Ingrid would be 87, and I would be 84 years old before I
might have my first chance to see her again. I was taken across the Canadian
border and kept in a locked room at Canadian Immigration offices at the
Peace Bridge. There was lots of gesticulation and loud talking. The end
result was that I was taken back across the U.S. border, still in a
snowstorm. We seemed to slide and slither for hours until I finally spotted
a sign saying "Attica, New York, Maximum Security Prison".
Luckily, the vehicle turned into Batavia and we finally arrived there at
dusk.
That prison was way out in a wind-blown farming area. It was
a flat-roofed facility, surrounded by high barbed-wire fences and search
lights with a small guard hut and a barrier, reminiscent of the Dr. Zhivago
film. A huge six-foot guard, dressed in a Russian-type fur hat and a dark
green greatcoat, came to check papers and cargo. It was a seemingly new,
very clean, well-organized facility. Unfortunately, I was only there for not
quite two days before I was taken back to Canada, this time for good.
I was deported via the Peace Bridge at Fort Erie on February
19, 2003. I was interrogated for about seven or eight hours off and on. I
was allowed to call Ingrid, my lawyer and, within two hours, some Scottish
friends from Hamilton, Ontario. They came to bring me some much-needed
money.
I was "arrested" again - I thought I had already
been arrested! - and taken to Thorold, the Niagara Region Detention Center
where, a few weeks later, I was "arrested" for the third time,
this time right in my cell.
I have been labeled a "security risk" for Canada
by ministerial decree - NOT for what I have done in 42 years of responsibly
living in that country, where I have no criminal record, but for what
somebody else in the future "might" do by reading what I have
discovered about the murky business called the "Holocaust".
I came to Canada in 1958 - a nineteen-year-old kid in search
of a productive life. I will be judged at age 64 by secret hearings where
neither I nor my attorneys will know what is being said about me, much less
who the witnesses are. No way can I defend myself - except by raising public
awareness.
=====
Can this be happening in America - the Land of the Free and
the Brave?
Since my husband's arrest, six months have gone by. He is
still in maximum detention. He is not allowed a chair, a pillow, or a pen.
Yet there are no criminal charges.
With this ad, I am pleading for public awareness.
If somebody smashes my window, I can go to the police and
complain - and can expect that someone will investigate. If somebody smashes
my life, is there no recourse because my husband holds politically incorrect
views backed up by solid research about the so-called "Holocaust"?
Holocaust Revisionism is not a cult or a subversive
ideology. It is a scientific methodology to sort out truths from falsehoods.
Research has shown the "Holocaust" is not "self-evident"
- yet it is shielded by practically all Western governments. The term has
the power to hurt, and it has the power to silence. It is the central taboo
of our time.
I say the "Holocaust" has grown into a cult and a
subversive ideology!
Recently, I paid for an ad in one of the major American
papers. The question I put to my country's elected officials is simply:
Exactly, what is meant by "Holocaust"? HISTORY? OR
DOGMA?
* If the Holocaust is history, it MUST be open to
investigation, like any other historical claim.
* If, on the other hand, the Holocaust is a religious dogma,
it has no place in law enforcement training manuals, supported by taxpayers'
money.
In my young years, I lived under four dictators - Stalin and
Hitler in Europe, Peron and Stroessner in South America. When I came to
America, I thought that I had entered paradise, where there was justice,
where there was law and order. I willingly and proudly became a US citizen.
I'd like to think that this is still America where dissident views have a
place.
Or am I wrong?
Does my own government approve of American law enforcement
officers to act as hit squads for alien interests, dragging a law-abiding
man of retirement age away in handcuffs and leg irons to be dumped in
maximum detention for months on end with no relief in sight - because he
questions claims that demonize his people, the Germans of the World War
generation?
A taboo has bitten into America's soul - a taboo that is
pose and pretense. It seems to get a free pass from the American government.
And yet its claims have no foundation in reality. Those claims must be
checked out. It's time to check them out. It's time to ask hard questions.
I will ask the members of my Congress and my Senate to take
swift, concrete steps to have my husband be returned to me, replete with his
politically incorrect views. I ask that men of principle and courage stand
up to the abuses of the Holocaust Lobby - and do so with verve and
conviction. I ask that men of honor, elected to serve the American people,
not dive for the politically correct fig leaf the moment the Holocaust Lobby
says "Boo!" .
But I will do more! I am asking the Russian President,
Wladimir Putin, to take a stand, condemning this abuse by government -
exactly as America, in past years, condemned the dictatorial actions in
Soviet Russia. I ask the Russian people to cut out the letter below and send
it to the Kremlin. Please do that for a man who has done nothing wrong - who
merely followed his conscience!
Dear President Putin:
You probably are not aware of my husband, Ernst Zündel -
but hundreds of thousands of people all over the world know his name. Ernst
Zündel is the man who, under vicious siege by a powerful political lobby,
sent an investigative team from Canada to Auschwitz in 1988 to test
forensically if "gassings" really happened - and found that they
did not. Science does not lie, and scientific findings can be verified. His
evidence must stand or fall in the free market of ideas. My husband has
pleaded for a safe, impartial global forum ever since to make his findings
known.
The Canadian Holocaust Lobby has never forgiven Ernst
Zündel. Recently, he was arrested on US soil - allegedly because he missed
an interview with Immigration and Naturalization Services officials. No
judge. No hearing. No recourse. Instead, leg irons and handcuffs - and
brutal incarceration in four maximum detention prisons, first in America and
now in Canada. False news was spread in mainstream media that he had
"overstayed his visa". Not so. He was married to a U.S. citizen,
and we have irrefutable documentation that he was legally entitled to be
here. His "punishment", just for a starter? Banned from the U.S.A.
for 20 years!
My husband's brutal treatment by government officials in
what many vainly hope are still two of the West's most law-abiding
democratic countries is reminiscent of the darkest days of Soviet Russia. I
know whereof I speak. At the age of five, I lost my father in a very similar
arrest in 1941 - never to see him again!
I am a Russian-born, German-descendant, award-winning
novelist, best known for an early novel, "The Wanderers", a
fictitious account of the life of my Russian-born Mennonite grandmother.
More recently, I wrote a trilogy, spanning seven generations and 200 years
and all the major political upheavals of the last two gruesome, bloody
centuries.
My people, living peacefully in the Ukraine since 1789, were
ethnically cleansed in the political purges of 1938-1941, and only a handful
of us could save ourselves, escaping with the retreating German Army in 1943
to Germany and, then, in 1948, to South America.
I grew up in the jungles, functionally illiterate and
knowing little of the political realities of dictatorships that transformed
and decimated countries like Russia and Germany. As an adult, I emigrated to
Canada and then to the United States, always thinking of the country of my
birth, Russia, as a place out of the depths of hell - until I learned about
an intellectual movement called Revisionism.
My now imprisoned husband is globally known as a Revisionist
pioneer. Ernst Zündel has a profound geopolitical understanding of the
moneyed interests setting brother against brother, causing rivers of blood
and tears for the gains of a handful of oligarchs who fattened themselves on
our pain. Today I know that Russia was as horribly victimized as Germany
was. Russia suffered as much as Germany did - and as America will suffer,
unless America wakes up and comes to understand today's events in light of
what was done so cruelly to law-abiding people yesterday.
Referring to my husband's brutal arrest, one of my Russian
Revisionist correspondents called Ernst and myself "America's
Refuseniks" and pledged his intellectual solidarity. It is an apt
description of who we are and what we do. We refuse to believe in historical
lies. We refuse to be dictated to and told who are our friends and who
should be our enemies. We refuse to surrender our Freedom of Speech. We
refuse to swallow manufactured history such as the "Holocaust by
gassing" - a lie that has become an intellectual stranglehold on every
Western country. If our findings are deemed "wrong", then let's
have a civilized debate in a respectable national forum where both sides can
offer arguments and evidence - and let the people judge!
Recently, I read an essay by Russian General Anatoly Wolkow,
titled "People, Listen To The Signals!" Here is a former enemy of
Germany who stretches out a hand of friendship to soften the political
mistakes of the past and bring long-needed healing to both Germany and
Russia. I believe there are millions of Russians who would identify with
what he says. I know there are millions of Germans all over the world who
would like nothing better than to bury the hostilities of World War II and
once again be known as Russia's partners, friends and scientific
benefactors. America would benefit from such a reconciliation. America is
not in need of yet another war.
We need to find ways to each other!
I plead with you to send a message to those millions,
Germans and Russians alike, as well as millions in America and Canada, that
we are kin, not enemies. A Russian leader of courage and vision could tell
the Western world that the Russia of today has finally become autonomous,
living by democratic principles, abhorring censorship.
There is a way to shame short-sighted Western bureaucrats
for their repressive laws - and wake up people globally to the realities of
vested interest power plays that move us ever closer to a frightening abyss.
A simple gesture, even if only symbolic, would telegraph around the world
that Russia, emerging out of decades of repression, has thrown away her
dictatorial shackles:
Declare Ernst Zündel, Prisoner of Conscience, in broad
daylight kidnapped "legally" by his nefarious enemies on U.S.
soil, to be the West's most notable "Refusenik" - and offer him
asylum and a passport.
Sincerely,
Ingrid Zundel, Ed.D.
[END]
So there you have it. And let me tell you once again that
this is only the beginning! Other plans are in the making, and we will not
give up!
Let this be our slogan - globally: NO SURRENDER! EVER!
Ingrid
Write to Canada's Immigration Minister and complain
over the unfair treatment Ernst Zündel has received.
Immigration Minister Denis Coderre
House of Commons
Parliament Buildings
Ottawa, Ontario
K1A 0A6
Telephone: (613) 995-6108
Fax: (613) 995-9755
Email: Coderre.D@parl.gc.ca |
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