Another Zundel letter from Mannheim Prison

[zgrams at zgrams.zundelsite.org]

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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 !


[START]


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 Š 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

[END]