ZGram - 11/30/2004 - "The Campaign to Decriminalize History" -
Part III
zgrams at zgrams.zundelsite.org
zgrams at zgrams.zundelsite.org
Tue Nov 30 03:21:45 EST 2004
Zgram - Where Truth is Destiny: Now more than ever!
November 30, 2004
Good Morning from the Zundelsite:
I have taken the liberty of inserting two small but important
corrections in this otherwise excellent, well-researched essay. They
are contained in square brackets and clearly marked. Below the
essay's conclusion.
[START]
(T)here are other ways of stifling open debate in a free country. If
the mass media decide not to play fair, and if journalists abandon
all basic standards of journalistic ethics, the public can be kept in
the dark about a controversial issue just as surely as if there were
laws prohibiting discussion of that subject.
Of course, media bias can be a difficult thing to prove. Advocates
for every political and ideological cause claim that some segment of
the media is biased against them, and it's the standard response of
every media outlet, from CNN to Fox, to deny that their coverage is
slanted or biased.
As difficult as it may be to pin down exactly what constitutes bias,
most in the media would certainly agree that it is unethical for a
reporter to invent a quote and falsely attribute it to an interview
subject.
Understanding that, let's revisit the case of Jewish documentary
filmmaker and Holocaust researcher David Cole (mentioned above). Mr.
Cole's experiences with the media provide an excellent example of the
manner in which dissident Holocaust and World War II researchers are
treated by the press. Whenever he was interviewed, Cole always went
to great lengths to say that he did not deny the Holocaust. Let's
take a look at a few examples of the media's accuracy when reporting
about Cole:
In March 1993, when the Daily Texan, the University of Texas at
Austin campus newspaper, decided to ban an advertisement for one of
David Cole's documentaries (this is the incident mentioned earlier in
which UT Austin Chancellor Robert Berdahl argued in favor of the
banning), Cole wrote an op-ed in defense of his film, which the Daily
Texan printed. This caused a major controversy that was covered by
the Associated Press (the world's largest news organization). The
March 9 AP dispatch, written by AP Southwest Bureau writer Pauline
Arrillaga, quoted Cole's op-ed as stating that "The Holocaust was a
hoax, fabricated to drum up support for Jewish causes."68
The problem was, that quote didn't appear in Cole's op-ed (or in
anything else Cole had ever written), and the sentiments expressed in
the phony quote were actually the complete opposite of Cole's
position, that it was primarily the Allied governments, not Jewish
organizations, that exaggerated war crimes evidence for military and
political reasons. As Cole pointed out, if the Allies had cared about
"Jewish causes," they would have expressed more concern about the
plight of the Jews during the war.
Cole sent a letter to Ms. Arrillaga asking about the origin of the
phony quote. Ms. Arrillaga replied with this response: "Yes, the
'hoax' line did not actually appear in your op-ed [emphasis ours]. We
mistakenly attributed it to you due to faulty background
information."69 Ms. Arrillaga, who did not explain what she meant by
"faulty background information," went on to say that if Cole wanted
the false quote corrected, it would be up to him to contact each one
of the hundreds of newspapers that carried the AP story!
When Cole was interviewed for the Jerusalem Report, Israel's leading
English-language newsmagazine, Cole made certain that the interview
was audiotaped, to ensure accuracy. When the interview was published
in October 1993, Cole was quoted as saying that the Holocaust was a
"fantasy."70 Once again, this was the exact opposite of Cole's
position. Cole contacted Sheldon Teitelbaum, the Jerusalem Report
senior reporter who had interviewed him, and demanded to know where
the "fantasy" quote came from, as Cole had never said it, and it was
not on the audiotape of the interview.
Mr. Teitelbaum was brazen enough to send Cole a faxed response with
the following admission:
The word "fantasy," I suspect, may have been chosen by a copy editor
who interpreted reality in this fashion. The quotation marks were not
intended to signify a quote from you [emphasis ours]. This offending
phrase works as a transgression against Strunk & White, who warn
against using quotation marks to signify sardonic word usage.71
In other words, this quote did not represent something that Cole had
actually said, but instead represented a copy editor's
"interpretation of reality." This copy editor used the phony quote in
a "sardonic" (defined by Webster's as "a disdainfully or derisively
mocking") way against Cole. When Cole asked the editors of the
Jerusalem Report to print a clarification to let their readers know
that he never said that the Holocaust was a "fantasy," they refused.
Reporter Teitelbaum cynically told Cole that the editors don't have
to worry about libel or slander laws because "they are not in U.S.
jurisdiction anyway."72
In July 1994, Cole was interviewed by Dr. Michael Shermer, a leading
critic of Holocaust revisionism. Shermer has penned several books
attacking revisionists, including Denying History and Why People
Believe Weird Things. Shermer's interview with Cole was part of an
article about revisionism that appeared in Shermer's magazine
Skeptic,73 and later, in expanded form, in Why People Believe Weird
Things. In the article, Shermer included Cole's name in a list of
revisionist "racists," right alongside the names of neo-Nazis and
skinheads. Shermer provided no evidence to back up this very serious
charge, and when Cole, who strenuously denied that he was in any way
racist, asked Shermer to issue a retraction, Shermer flat-out refused.
However, in February 1995, Shermer was interviewed by Daniel Berman,
a graduate student researching Holocaust revisionism. The interview
was not intended for public distribution, but Shermer allowed it to
be recorded. The following has been transcribed directly from the
tape of the interview:74
BERMAN: "Well, David Cole is not racist, is he?"
SHERMER: "No. And I didn't say that about David. He's not the least
bit racist."
BERMAN: "But in your article you listed a bunch of."
SHERMER: "Yeah, I'd already listed a bunch of racists, a bunch of
them together, and I threw Cole into that bunch because I was listing
everybody I had interviewed, and that was probably the biggest, uh,
misleading, the most misleading thing I said in my article. I should
have left Cole out of that."
Dr. Shermer admitted that he "misled" his readers regarding Cole
being a racist. Nevertheless, to this day, he refuses to print a
retraction in his magazine.
Shermer also made a few candid admissions about Cole's work:
SHERMER: "Maybe Cole's right. I think the whole gas chamber story is
probably, in terms of physical evidence, the weakest link in the
whole story. To me, it doesn't matter whether the gas chamber story
is completely true or not. Maybe it could be modified, for all I
know."
In January 1994, Cole was asked by veteran CBS newsman Mike Wallace
to be interviewed for 60 Minutes. Cole refused, citing concerns about
how his comments might be reedited in post-production to change their
meaning. 60 Minutes went ahead and profiled Cole anyway. For footage
of Cole, 60 Minutes relied on using clips from other talk shows he
had done, including a clip from Cole's 1992 appearance on The Montel
Williams Show. In the clip of The Montel Williams Show that was used
in the 60 Minutes profile of Cole, Montel looks at the camera and
asks if the Holocaust is "a myth." The camera then immediately cuts
to Cole nodding in agreement. To the millions of 60 Minutes viewers,
it clearly looked as though Cole nodded in agreement after Montel
asked if the Holocaust was a myth. The clip had been altered.
The April 1992 episode of The Montel Williams Show in which Cole
appeared, and the March 1994 episode of 60 Minutes in which Cole was
profiled, are both available from Burrelle's Transcripts. A
comparison of the two tapes shows that the producers of 60 Minutes
took a "nod" that David Cole gave at the very beginning of the show,
as Montel was reading a list of his credits, and re-edited the nod so
that it followed Montel's question about the Holocaust being a "myth."
Using a real-time counter, the "nod" appears at exactly 0:00:56
(fifty-six seconds) into the show. Nearly eleven minutes later, at
0:11:36 into the show, Montel looks at the camera and asks if the
Holocaust is a myth "or is it truth? We'll find out when we come
back." The camera then pans the audience as the show breaks for a
commercial; Cole is not shown nodding or doing anything else. When
the show returns from the break, Montel starts taking questions from
the studio audience; the "myth" question is not put to Cole, or to
anyone else on the panel.
The producers of 60 Minutes took Cole's "nod" from the beginning of
the show and placed it after Montel's "myth" question, which was
truncated to remove the rest of the sentence, in which Montel throws
to commercial break. To 60 Minutes viewers, it appeared as though
Montel asked the "myth" question to Cole, who then nodded in
agreement. A total fabrication, courtesy of America's number one
prime-time news program.
In six years of public appearances and lectures, David Cole, a
self-described political liberal, never once denied the Holocaust or
the mass killing of Jews, but that didn't stop major media outlets
from inventing quotes and fabricating footage in order to completely
misrepresent his views. And these are not isolated incidents. Most
revisionists have similar stories to tell.
The problem of media bias regarding dissident Holocaust and World War
II historians has become even harder to deny in the past few years.
The New York Times has, since 2000, sponsored yearly seminars at the
Times building in New York City with the express purpose of
convincing journalists and journalism students to censor revisionist
Holocaust and World War II views.75 At the February 2003 seminar, New
York Times publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. argued against allowing
any "intellectual exchange" with revisionist Holocaust historians,
and Emory University journalism professor (and former NYT reporter)
Catherine Manegold said that bias in this area is not only acceptable
but desirable.76
Sometimes it can be difficult to prove media bias. Sometimes it can
be surprisingly easy.
Recently, The Campaign to Decriminalize Holocaust History tracked
down David Cole, who has refused to make any public comment since
1997, when Irv Rubin removed the "death warrant" from Cole's head.
With Rubin dead, Cole felt comfortable enough to provide us with a
statement about the net effects of violence, intimidation, and media
bias on Holocaust history:
"When Rubin put the "hit" on me, I realized I had to get out. In the
end, regardless of my love of history, I didn't want to die. It was
just that simple. And that's what happens when violence and
intimidation, or the threat of prosecution, like in Europe and
Canada, are introduced into a debate. Anyone who has anything to lose
shuts the hell up, or gets the hell out.
"Criminalizing Holocaust history hasn't made the field safe from the
lunatic fringe - the anti-Semites, the "Holocaust deniers," the
people who have nothing to lose anyway. All it's done is make serious
researchers too frightened to say anything that might get them in
trouble. And frankly, it's irrelevant to me whether the historians
who've been fined or thrown in prison are right or wrong in their
theories and conclusions. Historians should have the right to be
wrong. To me, this is a fundamental right that applies to people in
every discipline.
"What's needed now is what I call a "post-hysteria cleanup." Whenever
society has one of its episodes of mass hysteria, like the "Communist
menace" scare of the '50s, or the "satanic child molestation"
hysteria of the '80s, the media and the politicians jump on the
bandwagon and people's rights get trampled. But after the hysteria
inevitably comes the "cleanup," when we have to clean up the mess we
made when we thought the sky was falling.
During the 1990s, there was a hysteria, especially in Europe and
Canada, about "Holocaust denial," and one country after another
passed laws aimed at punishing historians, writers, and publishers
who step out of line. Well, the hysteria's over now. It's time for a
cleanup; time to repeal those laws. There are a lot of good reasons
to do so, but for me, the number one reason comes down to a basic,
simple principle: no one should be thrown in prison for writing a
book."
CONCLUSION
If there is a common thread running through each section of this
booklet, it is that there is an inextricable connection between our
own freedoms and the freedoms we allow to others. When we allow views
we disagree with to be suppressed, we are, in the end, laying the
groundwork for those who disagree with us to suppress our views. When
we allow people we disagree with to be beaten and threatened with
death for speaking out, eventually we will encounter the same threats
when we try to speak out. And if we allow the press to lower its
standards of fairness and accuracy when dealing with "unpopular"
views, we may one day find ourselves the target of media bias for
expressing views that others find "unpopular."
There is also a connection between the laws that criminalize
Holocaust and World War II history abroad, and the quality of
Holocaust and World War II history in this country. With so many of
the world's major Holocaust research institutions and archives
located in Europe, the laws that restrict Holocaust and World War II
research in Europe significantly affect the quality of Holocaust
historiography in America and the rest of the world.
However, as important as it is to protect free speech and open
debate, a somewhat more provocative, but no less important, assertion
is that dissident views deserve to be heard; that we profit from
being exposed to them, whether we agree with them or not. We need to
challenge our beliefs by listening to those who believe differently.
When we expose ourselves to views that challenge our preconceived
notions, we will either become more secure in the correctness of our
own beliefs, or we will learn something new and revise our beliefs
accordingly. Either way, we will have profited from the experience.
This point was never better made than during the criminal trial of
Ernst Zundel, a publisher who was tried and convicted by the Canadian
government twice, in 1985 and 1988, for publishing revisionist books
about the Holocaust. Both convictions were overturned by the Canadian
courts, and Zundel fled to the U.S. with his American wife to escape
a third trial in Canada.
[Ingrid Zundel's comment here: Ernst did not "flee" to "escape a
third trial in Canada." A Human Rights Tribunal "trial", if one can
call it that, commenced in 1996 and dragged on for five long years
over articles posted on the Zundelsite, a website owned and operated
by me, a U.S. citizen. Ernst never ran that website and did not have
the passport, but I was not allowed to testify. Ernst gave up on
winning his case in the middle of that "trial" after the abominable
"truth is no defense" ruling by the Tribunal. If truth was no
defense and only Jewish feelings counted, there was no way that he
could win. We decided to marry and move to Tennessee, but Ernst kept
his Canadian business going and kept paying his Canadian attorneys
for an entire year so no one could claim that he "fled" to avoid
prosecution - and a verdict that was, from the beginning, a foregone
conclusion. Nonetheless, mainstream media kept repeating that Ernst
"fled" - and I am sad to see that this otherwise excellent and
carefully researched and documented article fell smack into the same
old propaganda trap!]
After 9/11, the U.S. shipped Zundel back to Canada, where the
Canadian government, using its new post-9/11 "security" laws, decided
to skip the inconvenience of having another trial, and simply threw
Zundel in prison without trial. Zundel has been held in solitary
confinement, in a small, bare, concrete "isolation cell," since
February 2003, even though he's been convicted of no crime, and even
though the only "crime" the Canadian government has ever charged him
with was publishing a book.77
[Comment: Actually, a booklet titled "Did Six Million Really Die?"!]
Appearing for the prosecution at Zundel's 1985 trial was Raul Hilberg
(the man who is considered the father of Holocaust history). During
cross-examination, Hilberg was asked by Zundel's attorney, Doug
Christie, whether people like Zundel actually perform a service by
questioning the views of mainstream Holocaust historians. The
resulting exchange is taken directly from the trial transcript:78
HILBERG: "Holocaust revisionists, without having wanted to do so in
the first place, have rendered us a good service. They have come up
with questions which have the effect of engaging the historians in
fresh research work. The historians are obliged to come forward with
more information, to scrutinize the documents once again, and to go
much further in the understanding of what really happened."
CHRISTIE: "So in fact people questioning these types of situations
can be of use to you and to others in stimulating further research."
HILBERG: "Obviously."
In 1995, Hilberg reiterated those views in an interview in Vanity
Fair, in which he expressed his disdain for laws that punish
revisionist historians: "If these people want to speak, let them. It
only leads those of us who do research to reexamine what we might
have considered as obvious. And that's useful to us. I am not for
taboos, and I am not for repression."79
Raul Hilberg, the world's most respected Holocaust author, freely
admits that revisionists perform a valuable service by challenging
the views of mainstream historians.
And that's what dissent does. It challenges the status quo.
Permitting dissent keeps things open and honest. Banning dissent
encourages deceit and intellectual laziness. World War II and
Holocaust history do not need to be "protected" by laws. No science
or discipline has ever been improved by government-imposed limits on
research and debate. Only those "experts" who don't have the factual
ammunition to defend their theories are served by laws that shield
them from criticism.
As President John F. Kennedy said, "We are not afraid to entrust the
American people with unpleasant facts, foreign ideas, alien
philosophies, and competitive values. For a nation that is afraid to
let its people judge the truth and falsehood in an open market is a
nation that is afraid of its people."80
The Campaign to Decriminalize Holocaust History is fighting to
overturn the laws that criminalize historical research into the
Holocaust and World War II, and to obtain freedom for anyone who has
been imprisoned under those laws. We also seek to prevent similar
laws from being passed in the United States. We feel that an
organization such as ours is necessary because other, more
traditional "free speech" organizations have steadfastly refused to
protest the prosecution and imprisonment of revisionist historians.
In the face of this silence, we feel that a new, focused effort is
needed to fight the criminalization of Holocaust and World War II
history.
###
NOTES
1 Technically, the laws that criminalize Holocaust and WWII history
apply to all 25 European Union nations, because EU regulations allow
cross-border prosecutions. Citizens of any EU nation can be held
ac-countable for breaking the laws of any other EU nation. Before
Belgium outlawed dissident Holocaust and World War II history,
dissident Bel-gian publishers and historians would be prosecuted
under the laws of Belgium's neighbor, the Netherlands (Jewish Press,
October 30, 1992).
2 To see the exact wording of the laws that criminalize Holocaust and
WWII history in each of the above nations, see links on this site.
3 For more details regarding revisionists and college campuses, see
www.CODOH.com.
4 The similarities between the Clinton Omnibus Antiterrorism Act and
the Patriot Act are spelled out in detail in a Center for National
Security Studies report available on the Web site of the Center for
Democracy and Technology,
www.cdt.org/policy/terrorism/cnss.cti.anal.html. {Add link?} The
Clinton law expanded the government's wiretapping powers and allowed
for the use of secret and illegally obtained evidence to de-port
aliens and for the permanent detention of aliens. As long as these
provisions were promoted by a liberal Democratic president for use
against right-wing, anti-government militias made up of "angry white
men," most "civil rights" and "human rights" advocates were willing
to remain silent, not realizing that one day those same provisions
might be used by a different administration against different targets.
5 "Respecting History," Cornell Daily Sun, November 22, 1991.
6 Robert Berdahl, "Holocaust Ad Violates TSP's Own Standard," Daily
Texan, February 22, 1993.
7 Transcription from videotape of 2000 Berkeley Commencement Cere-mony.
8 Bear in Mind (radio program), March 18, 2003.
9 "Expose Holocaust Revisionism to Rebuttal," Dallas Morning News,
January 4, 1992.
10 The conference was detailed in Group Defamation and Freedom of
Speech, ed. Monroe H. Freedman and Eric M. Freedman (Westport, CT:
Greenwood Press, 1995).
11 Letter from Professor Monroe H. Freedman to contest entrants.
Origi-nal copy in author's possession.
12 Professor Robert Martin, quoted in Group Defamation and Freedom of
Speech, p. 213.
13 Professor Kenneth Lasson, quoted in Group Defamation and Freedom
of Speech, p. 287.
14 Group Defamation and Freedom of Speech, p. 286
15 Ibid., p. 323
16 Interview with Devin House from the January 2004 issue of Mission
to Remember, the bimonthly newsletter of The Tinbergen Archives, a
Beverly Hills-based Holocaust education institute.
17 Group Defamation and Freedom of Speech, pp. 198, 279; keynote
address delivered at Hofstra Conference by Elie Wiesel (unpublished).
18 Caleb Tinbergen, "The Rarely Told Story of World War Two," Los
Angeles Times, October 29, 2001.
19 On Prime Minister Churchill's desire to "drench Germany with
poison gas," see Professor Barton J. Bernstein, "Why We Didn't Use
Gas in WWII," American Heritage, August-September 1985. On the U.S.
plan to initiate poison gas attack against Japan, see "Poisonous
Invasion Prelude," Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, August 4, 1995; Thomas B.
Allen and Norman Polmar, Code-Name Downfall: The Secret Plan to
Invade Japan and Why Truman Dropped the Bomb (New York: Simon &
Schuster, 1995).
20 F.J.P. Veale, Advance to Barbarism (Appleton, WI: C.C. Nelson,
1953); A.J.P. Taylor, Origins of the Second World War (New York:
Atheneum, 1961); David Irving, Churchill's War (Bullsbrook, Western
Australia: Veritas, 1987).
21 James Bacque, Crimes and Mercies (Toronto: Little, Brown, 1997);
Franklin Keeling, Gruesome Harvest (Chicago: Institute of American
Economics, 1947); Dr. Atina Grossman, Columbia University,
"Libera-tion and Mass Rape," unpublished 2001 essay (Grossman cites
estimates that put the number of German women raped by Allied
soldiers at war's end at 1.9 million; Grossman estimates that at
least one out of three women in Berlin was raped by the liberating
Allies).
22 Konrad Heiden, "Why They Confess," Life, June 20, 1949; "Nazi
Trial Judge Rips 'Injustice,'" Chicago Tribune, February 23, 1948;
Carlos Porter, Made in Russia: The Holocaust (n.p.: Historical Review
Press, 1988); "The Use of Torture and Coercive Interrogation in World
War II," Mission to Remember {yellow-highlighted citation needs
clarification and/or expansion}.
23 Lawrence Dennis and Maximilian St. George, A Trial on Trial: The
Great Sedition Trial of 1944 (Torrance, CA: Institute for Historical
Re-view, 1984).
24 John Bennett, "Was Orwell Right?," paper presented at the Sixth
In-ternational Revisionist Conference. {Add date}
25 Ray Bearse and Anthony Read, Conspirator: The Untold Story of
Ty-ler Kent (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1991).
26 Christopher Browning, The Path to Genocide: Essays on Launching
the Final Solution (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995);
Christopher Browning, Fateful Months: Essays on the Emergence of the
Final Solution (New York: Holmes and Meier, 1985).
27 "David Cole Interviews Dr. Franciszek Piper." Available at CODOH.com.
28 Die Zeit, August 12, 1960.
29 The official United States Government-filmed record of Nazi camps,
Nazi Concentration Camps (1945; directed by George Stevens), claimed
that inmates were gassed at Dachau. The same claim was made in the
official British-filmed record of Nazi camps, Memory of the Camps
(1945; directed by Alfred Hitchcock). A plaque currently on display
at the Dachau camp states plainly that no inmates were gassed at
Dachau.
30 Letters from Raye Farr, Director, Department of Film and Video,
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, to Holocaust survivor Josef
Klein, April 29, 1996, and August 30, 1996. From the private
collection of the late Josef Klein.
31 "Beyond Doubt: Understanding the Holocaust: An Interview with Raul
Hilberg," by Dr. Michael Shermer, April 10, 1994; {Where does this
article/interview appear?} for confirmation that Rudolf Hoess,
com-mandant of Auschwitz, was tortured by the British, see the
testimony of Hoess' captors in Rupert Butler, Legions of Death
(Feltham, Eng.: Ham-lyn, 1983).
32 "Auschwitz Revisionism: An Israeli Scholar's Case," New York
Times, November 12, 1989.
33 Heiden, "Why They Confess" (above, note 22).
34 "100 Reasons to Decriminalize Holocaust History," 2004, published
by The Campaign to Decriminalize Holocaust History.
35 Richard Bernstein, "A New Book Is Said to Refute Revisionist View
of the Holocaust," New York Times, December 18, 1989; Richard
Bern-stein, "Verifying the Horror," Los Angeles Jewish Journal,
December 22, 1989.
36 Jean-Claude Pressac, Auschwitz: Technique and Operation of the Gas
Chambers (New York: Beate Klarsfeld Foundation, 1989), p. 429.
37 Ibid., p. 555.
38 The Holocaust Story in the Crossfire: The Weber-Shermer Debate,
VHS (Newport Beach, CA: Institute for Historical Review, 1995). This
videotape of a July 22, 1995, debate between Dr. Shermer and
Institute for Historical Review director Mark Weber, Shermer states
that he is "certain" that the room displayed as a gas chamber at the
Majdanek camp in Poland is "not a homicidal gas chamber."
39 Dr. Michael Shermer interview of Michael Berenbaum, April 13, 1994.
40 In 1997 Berenbaum left the United States Holocaust Memorial
Mu-seum to serve as director of Steven Spielberg's Survivors of the
Shoah Foundation.
41 Dr. Michael Shermer, interview by Daniel Berman, February 23,
1995. {Transcript available?} In the interview, Shermer goes so far
as to suggest that the revisionists might have created a "paradigm
shift" in Holocaust history by asking questions that no one has ever
thought to ask.
42 The Ambulance (1962; directed by Janusz Morgenstern), is
distributed in the U.S. by The National Center for Jewish Film,
Brandeis University, Waltham, MA. The Simon Wiesenthal Center's
Museum of Tolerance allows no photographic reproduction of any of its
exhibits, and visitors are searched for cameras upon entering.
However, footage taken by revi-sionist activists inside the Museum of
Tolerance with a hidden camera in 2002 shows the museum's interactive
video monitors playing what is described as "documentary footage" of
Jewish children being killed in a "gas van" disguised as an
ambulance. A comparison of this "documen-tary footage" with a scene
from The Ambulance shows that the Museum of Tolerance footage has
been lifted directly from the 1962 fictional film.
43 The Holocaust, Israel, and the Jews: Motion Pictures in the
National Archives, comp. Charles Lawrence Gellert (Washington, DC:
National Archives and Records Administration, 1989). Page 34 lists a
reel of film described only as "Army Signal Corps Stock Film, 9.6
minutes, silent, b&w, Interior of a gas chamber, including handprints
dug into the ce-ment wall by the victims." This "silent" footage of a
"gas chamber" is actually taken from a narrated U.S. Army Signal
Corps film, National Archives catalog number 111 M 1190, 48 minutes,
sound, b&w. This film establishes that the footage described in The
Holocaust, Israel, and the Jews as showing a "German gas chamber" is
actually footage of a Parisian rifle range.
44 On December 11, 2003, a judge in Hamburg, Germany, freed Moroc-can
Al Qaeda member Aldelghani Mzoudi from custody, on the grounds that
he was not a member of the specific Al Qaeda cell that plotted the
9/11 attacks. The judge ruled that Mzoudi could not be held in
custody simply for being a member of Al Qaeda. In Germany, being a
member of Al Qaeda is legal, even though the organization's stated
aim is the mur-der of Americans and Jews.
45 A good overview of the popularity of 9/11 conspiracy books in
France (and elsewhere in Europe) can be found in John A. McCurdy,
"Making a Case for 9/11 Skepticism," Global Research, November 20,
2003.
46 The best, most brutally critical revisionist history regarding
Israeli wars comes from Israeli scholars. The French government
should take a page out of Israel's book and allow its own scholars
the right to brutally examine and, if necessary, revise, the history
of World War II.
47 Canadian Customs' list of banned history books is provided in "20
Years of Revisionist Oppression," available at CODOH.com. For a
fas-cinating article detailing the ease with which private
organizations can lobby the Canadian government to ban a particular
book from the entire country of Canada, see "Wiesenthal Center Wants
Book Banned," Canadian Jewish News, January 14, 1988.
48 Noel Wright, "Battling the Tyrants of the Mind," North Shore News,
May 12, 1997.
49 Greg Krikorian and Richard Winton, "JDL Leader Accused in Mosque
Bomb Plot," Los Angeles Times, December 13, 2001.
50 Los Angeles Daily News, December 9, 1982, p. 10.
51 Daily Breeze (Torrance, CA), September 1, 1984; R. Varenchik, "Man
Who Calls Holocaust a Lie Reports Threat; JDL Figure Held," Los
Angeles Daily News, August 21, 1984, pp. 1, 8.
52 A. Jalon, "Bomb Hits Home of Holocaust Doubter," Los Angeles
Times, May 16, 1985.
53 IHR Newsletter, June 1981, p. 4; IHR Newsletter, May 1983, p. 6.
54 "Arsonists Hit Institute for Historical Review Office," Daily
Breeze (Torrance, CA), July 5, 1984, p. A3; "Nazi Holocaust Doubters
Target of Jewish Group," Los Angeles Times, August 1, 1985, p. B1.
55 "Arsonists Hit Institute for Historical Review Office," Daily
Breeze (Torrance, CA), July 5, 1984, p. A3; "JDL Applauds Blaze at
Torrance Institute," Daily Breeze (Torrance, CA), July 7, 1984, pp.
Al, A6.
56 Bruce Hoffman, Terrorism in the United States and the Potential
Threat to Nuclear Facilities, prepared for the U.S. Dept. of Energy,
R?3351?DOE, January 1986 (Santa Monica, CA: Rand Corporation, 1986),
pp. 1-16.
57 Tulsa Tribune, April 12, 1985.
58 "Truth, Democracy Lose as JDL Bullies Revisionists," Daily Pilot
(Costa Mesa, CA), February 21, 1989.
59 Daily Bruin, January 23, 1992. Along with the crew from CBS News'
48 Hours, the lecture/assault was also covered by the local Fox
affiliate, KTTV Channel 11.
60 "Who Is David Cole and Why Must He Die?" Copy in author's pos-session.
61 Cole was assaulted by three men who followed him as he walked home
from his neighborhood supermarket on the night of November 22, 1994,
at approximately 11:40 PM. Cole suffered a broken nose and cut eye.
Cole did not recognize the men, and police made no arrests. The
interview has not been broadcast.
62 From an interview with Irv Rubin and Earl Krugel, September 1994,
conducted and videotaped by Adam Parfrey, owner of Feral House
Pub-lishing and, at that time, a columnist for the San Diego Weekly.
63 Anti-Defamation League Web site, "David Cole and Roger Garaudy," 2001.
64 Jewish Defense League Web site, "Jewish Holocaust Denier Asks for
Forgiveness," 1998.
65 "20 Years of Revisionist Oppression" (above, note 47).
66 Christopher Hitchens, "Hitler's Ghosts," Vanity Fair, June 1996;
Christopher Hitchens, "Where Historical Revisionism Is Concerned,
Nothing's Sacred, and That's Not a Bad Thing," Vanity Fair, December
1993; Richard Cohen, "Controversial Goebbels Bio Deserves to Be
Read," New York Post, June 5, 1996.
67 Teresa Watanabe, "Japanese Firm Offers Class on Holocaust," Los
Angeles Times, May 27, 1995. The article in the Times applauded
Bungei Shunju for closing down the "offending publication" (Marco
Polo) and firing its staff, and for forcing all other employees to
attend a Simon Wiesenthal Center-sponsored seminar on anti-Semitism,
"in contrition for the (revisionist) article."
68 Pauline Arrillaga, "Ad Denying Holocaust Sparks Protest at UT,"
As-sociated Press, March 9, 1993. Arrillaga's false quote was widely
quoted in the weeks following her AP story. For one example, see
Debbie M. Price, "Ignorance Is Soil for Insidiously Sown Lies about
Holocaust," Fort Worth Star-Telegram, April 25, 1993. Believing the
phony quote to be real, columnist Price denounced Cole as "a voice of
pure evil."
69 Audiotape of conversation between David Cole and Pauline
Arrillaga, March 12, 1993.
70 Sheldon Teitelbaum, "Who Needs Enemies?," Jerusalem Report,
Oc-tober 21, 1993.
71 Fax from Sheldon Teitelbaum to David Cole, October 8, 1993.
72 Ibid.
73 Dr. Michael Shermer, "Who Says the Holocaust Never Happened?,"
Skeptic, vol. 2, no. 4 (1994).
74 Transcribed directly from audiotape of interview with Dr. Michael
Shermer, conducted by graduate student Daniel Berman on February 23,
1995.
75 Anti-Defamation League, "Interpreting the First Amendment on
Campus: ADL and the New York Times Address Newspaper Accept-ability
Policies, New York, N.Y.," press release, December 1, 2000; Lewis
Bauer, "NY Times Colloquium Chips Away at Poignant Ques-tions," BI-CO
News (Haverford and Bryn Mawr Colleges).
76 The BI-CO News story mentioned in note 75.
77 James S. McCarten, "Judge Ponders Zundel Detention," London Free
Press News, November 20, 2003; "Judge Rules in Zundel Case,"
Cana-dian Press (CP) wire service dispatch, November 26, 2003:
"Zundel, who has no criminal record in Canada and is not facing any
charges, has been in solitary confinement since February after being
deported to Canada for overstaying a visitor's visa in the United
States."
78 Taken directly from court transcript of Raul Hilberg's
cross-examination during the trial of Ernst Zundel, January 16, 1985.
79 Hitchens, "Hitler's Ghosts" (above, note 66).
80 From a tribute to poet Robert Frost, delivered at Amherst College
in Massachusetts, October 27, 1963.
===== END =====
[Updated 8 August 2004]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
THE CAMPAIGN TO DECRIMINALIZE
WORLD WAR II HISTORY was founded by Christopher Cole and Bradley R.
Smith. Smith is a revisionist, while Cole is not.
Christopher Cole
Christopher Cole was a fixture in leftist and progressive politics in
Los Angeles in the late 1980s and early '90s. In 1988 he founded the
first Los Angeles chapter of the influential leftist organization
Refuse and Resist. As head of the L.A. chapter of R&R, Cole organized
benefit concerts and promotional gigs with artists such as Sinead
O'Connor, Michelle Shocked, and Fishbone. Cole was also instrumental
in organizing the network of politically and socially conscious
organizations that toured with the Lollapalooza festival.
Cole was a founding member of the Ad-Hoc Coalition for Freedom of
Expression, which was formed in 1989 to protest the Bush
Administration's denial of NEA grant money to controversial artists.
Other members of the Coalition included officials of L.A.'s Museum of
Contemporary Art, and the legendary L.A. performance art space,
Highways. From 1989 through 1992, the Coalition organized art shows
across Southern California, showcasing the works of censored artists.
A member of the ACLU, the National Lawyers Guild, the National
Writers Union, and the National Abortion Rights Action League, Cole
helped organize a pro-choice concert for L.A. talk radio station KFI
in 1990, featuring Sinead O'Connor and Susan Sarandon. That same
year, Cole helped organize a concert at L.A.'s Wilshire Ebell Theatre
to raise funds for the new democratic government of Czechoslovakia.
Cole served as head of the L.A. chapter of Refuse and Resist until
1991, when he became troubled by what he saw as a growing desire
among some on the left to censor views they didn't agree with, as
evidenced by the clamor for campus "speech codes" in the early '90s.
Cole left the ACLU in 1992 in protest of what he saw as that
organization's reluctance to take a clear and unambiguous stand
against censorship in all its forms. Since the mid-'90s, Cole has
been an occasional op-ed contributor to the Los Angeles Times,
writing on free-speech issues.
Cole co-founded the Campaign to Decriminalize World War II History
because, as he puts it, "This issue is the test of one's commitment
to free speech. Liberals cried 'censorship' when CBS moved the Ronald
Reagan TV movie to the Showtime cable network, and when an appearance
by Tim Robbins at the Baseball Hall of Fame was cancelled because of
the actor's views on the Iraq war. None of these examples of
so-called censorship compare to the draconian measures being carried
out by the nations of the West against Holocaust revisionists. Yet
who has the courage to stand up for the rights of these people?
Anyone who is truly against censorship should feel impelled to speak
out on this issue. So-called 'anti-censorship' activists who confine
their righteous indignation to safe and comfortable controversies are
cowards, pure and simple."
Bradley R. Smith
Bradley R. Smith is an author, playwright, and free speech activist.
He has been interviewed hundreds of time by the print press, radio,
and television where he argues, simply, that the Holocaust question
should be examined in the routine manner that all other historical
questions are examined. He asks: "Why should it not be?
Smith is a combat veteran (Korea, 7th Cavalry), has been a deputy
sheriff (Los Angeles County), a merchant seaman, a bookseller on
Hollywood Boulevard, a freelance writer in Vietnam (1968), and a
long-time activist for free speech. As a bookseller in the 1960s he
refused to stop selling a book that was banned by the U.S.
Government-Henry Miller's Tropic of Cancer-and was prosecuted for
breaking the law.
During the 1990s Smith ran essay-advertisements in student newspapers
at colleges and universities around the country calling for
intellectual freedom with regard to the Holocaust question. One
result was that he became the most widely recognized revisionist
activist in America. Pursuing this American ideal of free inquiry and
open debate has earned him the enmity of those who represent what
Norman Finkelstein has so aptly termed, the "Holocaust Industry."
Rabbi Carlos C. Huerta has written:
"Bradley Smith is doing the community a service. He is beginning to
make many Americans, both Jewish and non-Jewish, realize that the
traditional method of dealing with Holocaust revisionism by ignoring
it will no longer suffice."
Carlos C. Huerta, Midstream: A Monthly Jewish Review.
[Major Huerta is a military chaplain serving (March 2004) in Iraq.]
Carlos Huerta was prescient, if not clairvoyant, with his suggestion
that "ignoring" revisionism would not suffice for those who want it
to go away. Those who own and administer the Holocaust Industry have
been able to make the expression of doubt about the "gas chambers" a
criminal offense in France, Belgium, Germany, Spain, Switzerland, and
Austria, (up to 20 years (!) in prison for saying what we say here),
and of course, in Israel. At this writing Holocaust revisionist Ernst
Zundel has been in a Canadian prison since February 2003, in solitary
confinement, for re-printing a booklet that questions the gas-chamber
stories. That is not only unjust, but morally wrong.
Smith asks: If it is right to imprison you for writing a book, right
to imprison you for printing a book, right to imprison you for
selling a book, would it not be right to imprison you for reading a
forbidden book? Isn't that the logic of the matter when you follow it
out? It's really too stupid (as Proust would have it), but there it
is. The author, the printer, the seller, the reader. Will we play the
role of mere bystanders? Will we do nothing?
Bradley R. Smith is author of Break His Bones: The Private Life of a
Holocaust Revisionist.
[END]
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