Another Zundel Letter from Prison ! This one was written for
the Robert Faurisson family - and I must tell you happily that I already
feel the old Zundel combativeness asserting itself. Could be that there's
something in the air !
Ernst Zündel
JVA Mannheim
Herzogenriedstr. 111
68169 MANNHEIM
Germany
[In red pencil :] Happy Easter !
20-21.3.05
Dear Yvonne, René, Robert and Jean !
I am still suffering from a shortage of stamps! I can only
purchase ten 55 cents internal European stamps every two weeks. But one
letter to Ingrid or my Canadian or U.S. lawyers takes two stamps to make
sure the letters are sent Air Mail - otherwise they take 6-8 weeks by
regular mail. In Canada I sent up to 55-60 letters a week - so you can
imagine my shock and frustration with this arrangement. Friends are now
sending me some stamps, and so far the judge who has to censor my mail has
let them through. Thus I have been able to spare a few stamps for special
people like you !
Would you please tell Jean, your brother, that I got his
letter, and thank him for the offer to pay me a visit ?
Here is my dilemma: [In a month], I am allowed only two
30-minutes visitors (up to three can come into the room), no gifts, no
money, nothing can be given to me and vice-versa. An official listener, a
person in uniform, sits within 1-2 yards and listens to all, interjects
with suggestions, advice, etc. in a jovial, friendly and civilized way -
but it gives you an idea of the ambiance of the situation.
So, as much as I would love to see and get to know Jean, I
think I'd better reserve my visiting hours for potential witnesses. After
my conviction, I can use up my meager visitors' quota for private visits.
But for now I am still « on duty, » and must once more sacrifice my
private desires on the altar of the cause of Freedom and Truth in History.
As you can see, I have a real pen !
I have already used up to three ball-point pens, which
last exactly between 40-45 pages, but they cost only 35 cents. I have
bought 10 ball-point pens; we are allowed to shop in a kind of self-serve
store in the prison for our personal needs every two weeks.
This is needed, because the German system is odd! There is
only one warm meal a day at noon. Then at night there are about five
pieces of dark or rye bread - boy, do I love and cherish that German
bread! - and some two slices of cheese or sausage. That has to last for
the evening meal and the next morning's breakfast. We make our own tea or
coffee, in a one litre stainless-steel tea/coffee-pot using an electric
immersion heater, which each inmate has to buy for ¤ 9.95. The coffee we
have to buy at the prison store. I have been given some tea bags by the
staff. That's an arrangement which really suits me fine, because I hated
the supersweetened slop, like colored dish water, served in Canada and the
U.S.A. as beverage - lukewarm, and often one could not tell, was it tea or
coffee? Disgusting stuff !
The food here is very German - Hallelujah! Like my
mother's cooking - better quality and larger quantities than in Canada.
The portions in the U.S.A. were criminally small. Imagine that! The U.S.
prisoners were always hungry - it was a constant refrain. And the food was
of no nutritional value - things like supersweet cereals, cornflakes, hot
dogs, hamburgers half as [large] as at McDonald's.
So definitely this is an improvement! A vast improvement !
But the drawbacks are only two visits a month, with
permission from the judge needed, and details to be given in advance as to
name, address, etc. - and the most disgusting thing is only one phone call
of five minutes a month allowed. Poor Ingrid must be frantic! I do not
know how she will cope with that for the next five years or more!
While I am in investigative custody - which could be for
many months - I am allowed no phone calls whatsoever, not even to the
lawyer, which on the face of it would seem to be illegal by international
norms?
I am investigating that.
The staff here are cordial and efficient - genuinely nice,
humane Germans - one more reason not to believe in those horror stories of
nasty behavior by these people's fathers and grandfathers. They simply
could not be that evil - it is not in their nature. I was right in my
instincts, even as a young man - the Germans are innocent!
My cell was occupied before - so other inmates told me -
by the father of tennis star Stefie Graf who allegedly cheated on his
income taxes. It's a nice cell! I have my own internal light-switch. I can
completely turn the light off. I have my own large window to get fresh
air, open 24 hours a day. I have my own white, modern, porcelain toilet
and a very large and modern wash-basin. There is an intercom where I can
call central control in case of an emergency. And I have a built-in,
two-station radio - the programs of which are so disgusting (white, i.e.
German rap music) that I turned it on for less than five minutes and never
again.
I could rent or buy a color T.V. There are provisions for
it in my cell. Udo Walendy offered to cover the cost - I could hardly
believe his generosity. I gratefully declined, because I have gotten used
to my « Martin Luther at the Wartburg »-like existence in blissful
solitude. I can hear crows in the morning, sea-gulls (the Neckar river is
appr. 200 meters away) and then hear the purring and cooing of doves
outside. Nice, idyllic!
I attended a Protestant church service last Sunday and a
Catholic one this morning. Nice organ music - and priest and minister both
have nice singing voices. I also saw Mel Gibson's film, The Passion of
Christ, thanks to our highly alert Protestant minister who wrote a
scathing letter in the prisoners' in-house Newsletter, criticising the
German banks for their greed and profit-making while firing another 4,000
workers, lamenting their a-social, anti-social behaviour. He sounded about
as close to N.S. as one can come to in today's Germany - so naturally I
had to meet and get to know him better!
He is disturbed by some aspects of the Bible, like the
story of Abraham about to sacrifice Isaac to obey God's will, and he used
Ingrid's and my own arguments out loud in church, during his own sermon -
about what kind of God (supposedly loving God) would « stress out » a
father with the request to murder his own son!
Wow! Donnerwetter! as my mother would have said.
Now there is a man still able to think for himself after 8
years of seminary brain-washing! That's amazing! He does not know it yet -
but he already is a revisionist, for the moment only of Bible texts. He
also had a very interesting slant on Mel Gibson's film. And he was visibly
taken aback by the Romanian and Polish prisoners' virulent condamnation of
« the Jews » after they saw that horrific, monstrous anti-Roman film !
I did not like that film at all. I think it is a
disgusting and very poor film. I am shocked that Mel Gibson would produce
such a sick, sadistic, sado-masochistic [feature]. The torture scenes were
far, far too graphic, interminably and unnecessarily long. The idiotic
nonsense of letting the high priests and Jesus talk in Hebrew or old
Aramaic and Pontius Pilate in Latin offended me to NO end. It made the
film cumbersome, pedestrian. It was unnecessary, and added no authenticity
to an already highly unlikely, unbelievable, typically Middle-Eastern
fairy tale. I will not see that movie again and will remain highly
critical of it. It's a disgusting piece of Hollywood.
But - I am very, very grateful to that Protestant minister
to allow me to see it in these unlikely surroundings, for it allowed me an
insight into him that I would not otherwise have had.
What an amazing life I lead - sometimes I can only shake
my head about the surreality of it all.
I must also report to you that medical care and dental
care was better and swifter than in Toronto - where they would not allow
me my tooth-brush or tooth-paste in my cell, which caused me gum problems
due to their lousy bread and vitamin- deficient food. I had asked for a
medical mouthwash in Canada for over 1 1/2 years. They never allowed it to
me. Twice they gave me a saltwater rinse in a small paper cup. I was not
yet in Germany for 14 hours, and only 30 minutes in this prison, and the
doctor immediately prescribed herbal, oil based, highly concentrated
mentholated drops, which gave me enormous relief after a few days. I was
also given a full length regular tooth brush and toothpaste, a comb,
shampoo, soap, two towels, a face-cloth in my cell - all things I had not
had in Canada. I was also given shaving soap and several razors to use and
to keep in my cell.
My cell door has no window [where] I can be snooped at and
observed 24 hours a day around the clock. I am also allowed 1 hour each
morning in the large prison yard - together with other prisoners - not
alone in a 15 x 20 square-meter enclosure for 10 minutes, observed by 3
uniformed guards like in Canada. In the U.S.A. I saw no daylight and no
fresh air while I was there from the 5th Feb. to the 19th Feb. 2003.
Also : Within less than two weeks I was given my very own
pencil sharpener, denied me in Canada for two years and one month! And I
just got a water-colour paint box with 24 colors, along with 15 different
brushes, of course of the very cheapest quality for school children. It is
the principle involved ! I asked for two years for colors. Ingrid sent me
colors and brushes. I was never allowed this luxury.
So when the times come for my reparations from Canada - as
they will, when the current rotten, corrupt system will have collapsed -
my grievances will be pursued by me against my tormentors on both sides of
the Atlantic with typically un-Schwabian vengeance and passion. I am to be
compensated in exactly the same generous style, and quantity, as the Jews
were compensated by Germany - not one cent and not one apology less! That
much prison has accomplished in me - it has given me the steely resolve I
lacked before!
As Savitri Devi said of A.H. - he was too much Sun and not
enough Lightning. Well, I suffered from the same typically German
shortcoming. My enemies have cured me of that, and I am still being
hammered on the anvil of history into that rare, fine steel necessary for
victory.
Nietzsche correctly said « Was mich nicht umbringt
macht mich stärker ». [Whatever doesn't kill me, makes me stronger]
Prison certainly has had this effect on me.
Before I close, let me ask all of you for your input,
especially Robert's and some of the scholarly and famous people Robert and
you, Yvonne, know. I need to know what you think I should do, how I should
react or conduct myself - given the German context of our time, and the
Draconian legal constraints operating in Germany. Your ideas, your input,
your contributions are herewith sought - I mean this seriously. We are
facing a very different situation than in the past. We are facing a far
more desperate, and a very insecure enemy - for they can see that their
W.W. II and post-W.W. II alliances and financial order are creaking in all
joints. New realities are arising. New political alignments are taking
shape. This is not the time for one more recounting, in yet another court
room, what I have proclaimed for over a quarter of a century to an
indifferent, brain-washed world.
So let me know what you would do if you were faced by my
situation, given the legal situation and the « Zeitgeist » prevailing in
Germany in the year 2005 ! Now is the time to stick together, to share
news, not to panic, not to overreact.
I had two years to reflect on my life's path and on my
life's work - I made only one major mistake and that was [a previous brief
marriage]! However, I learned painful lessons from that, which I will not
forget for the rest of my life. The rest ? Given the chance, I would
travel the same road again, only more wisely in the choice of associates,
less liberal, less naive. This time I would be tougher, less forgiving to
friend and foe - and expect even higher standards of them and of myself.
One word of caution :
Do not contemplate [coming] anywhere near Germany, for the
fever is still raging. It must first run its course. It makes no sense for
Robert to even contemplate to come and testify! The German authorities do
not lack knowledge of the truth in history - they only lack the courage
and the intestinal fortitude. In other words, collectively they lack the
courage, the will and, above all, the character to step forward and say «
Bis hierher und nicht weiter ». [To here and no farther !]
Thus your contribution of one more testimony to the truth
will not cure them of their lack of courage, will and character - in fact,
it will convince them only of the power of their enemies, who have been
able to defend a historical chimera for over 60 years so ruthlessly !
Please tell all our friends, Ingrid please, too, and
Jacqueline B., that all is well, and that I will write to each in turn as
postage permits. That's a promise!
I am thinking about you ! And I want to thank all of you
for the many, many kindnesses and material, intellectual, and physical
help to me in my arduous life's path - especially the last 20-25 years.
All the very best, my friends !
Steadfast in loyalty.
E. Zündel
