ZGram - 9/9/2003 - "Ingrid's Refusenik Ad, Russian Version"

[zgrams at zgrams.zundelsite.org]

ZGram - Where Truth is Destiny:  Now more than ever!

September 9, 2003

Good Morning from the Zundelsite:

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