Ernst Zundel ponders the mood of the opening of Germany's Holocaust Heresy Trial

[zgrams at zgrams.zundelsite.org]

In a letter to his wife, ethnic novelist Ingrid Rimland, Ernst Zundel 
ponders the mood of the opening of Germany's Holocaust Heresy Trial:

My dear Ingrid -

Never before have I been confronted with such a situation - it is in 
every respect surreal.   Only you with your artistic nature would 
fully comprehend it. Here is the clip:  I am the captain of my ship, 
captain of my soul, and like [the hero] in the Odyssey, I have just 
passed through some hair-raising storms and travails and have been 
more or less shipwrecked on some foreign shore.  I don't have any 
maps of these, for me, uncharted waters.  So I hire someone who, like 
Mark Twain, knows the mighty Mississippi River, and tells me, the 
captain:  Turn here. Cross there.  Avoid this rock, that shoal. 
Watch the sand bank over there.  My lawyers, who have had a lifetime 
of experience in navigating in these dangerous and tricky German 
waters, tell me to take a course of action totally at odds with what 
my instincts tell me I should do.

The lousiest decisions in my life were always those when my mind 
overruled my intuition.  The worst results stemmed precisely from 
this dichotomy. To all other people this would sound odd, but not to 
you, for you know me by now pretty well. You sensed that I was 
working on an intuitive plan.  I formulated it, outlined it - and saw 
it torn to shreds by the reality of the legal system as it exists - 
not as it is written in the criminal code of present-day, post-WWII 
Germany. Now I sail my ship of fate in unfamiliar waters on the 
guidance of people who are my trusted advisors, but whose instincts I 
distrust.  Apparently there is a vast difference in Germany between 
the letter of the law and the spirit of the law as applied - far more 
pronounced, it seems to me after yesterday's encounter with the 
lawyers, than even in America or Canada.

Thus, my lady, what will unfold is not my intuitively arrived-at 
solution, which I not only felt but intellectually believed would 
have allowed the German justice system to extricate itself from an 
impossible cul de sac into which the politicians have driven the 
people, into which opportunistic legislators, financed by and 
beholden to powerful lobbies, the bane of modern societies, have 
forced them.  It will ultimately lead to this civilization's 
collapse.  I firmly believe this.  This is how Greece, Rome, Czardom 
and Weimar perished!  In the context of German reality, at this time, 
as I find it in the courtroom in Mannheim, I have little choice but 
to take my pilots' advice - or risk an even greater shipwreck. 

One day, Ingrid, when all this is over, I will explain my plan to you 
and to the world at large.  This is not the time, not the place, not 
the right medium in the form of a letter to be read in a few days by 
the very man who will sit in judgment over me.  I have spent many 
weeks and months plowing through 30 four-to-five inch thick ring 
binders of "evidence" gathered by the German states' various police 
forces, intelligence agencies, snitches and informants.  Ingrid, the 
German authorities do not lack information about what the issues are 
that confront them and concern them and their history.  The problem 
is how they use, or misuse, that information.

I give you an example of the spirit afoot here.  A 78-year-old 
academic of high rank tried bravely to defend himself by explaining, 
very cautiously and carefully phrased, why he had certain views and 
doubts - and was promptly recharged again!  He defended himself again 
- and was recharged for the third time!  It took my breath away when, 
last night and this morning, I read the details of this case, and 
others - all 2004-2005 cases! - that convinced me to let my head 
overrule my intuition. 

The German people must find their way out of this dilemma 
collectively.  I alone cannot achieve it for them.  My fellow 
independent thinkers cannot achieve it for them.  The playing field 
is not level.  The goal posts are being changed daily. 

===

I am afraid the veneer came off yesterday. It was good that it came 
off so early in these proceedings!  My lawyers were proven right. 
Had I insisted on my plan, I would have looked like 
Hans-guck-in-die-Luft.  [Ernst is referring to a German parable of a 
boy with his head in the clouds, not watching where he is going] 
Since I saw friends from all over in the audience, I am sure that you 
will have had reports about what went on inside. Since I saw the 
judicial system and its representatives of this current German entity 
in action, I think it is better I censor myself severely!

The 8th November '05 hearing was in content and in conduct something 
that school children will one day read about.  It will one day be 
part of the German law school curriculum - trust me, Ingrid!  I saw 
all kinds of people in the court room - from Chile, Paraguay, the US, 
England, Canada, France, Belgium, Austria - I was actually surprised 
that so many people came from so far away to show their moral 
support!  The room was large, bright, the sound system was far 
superior to what it was in Canadian courtrooms.  97% of the time one 
could hear clearly what Dr. Meinerzhagen said or read from documents. 
He looked again, unnervingly, like my mentor, Mr. Arcand.  The 
prosecutor is an elegant, good-looking, well-groomed man of maybe 
42-45 years, with bright eyes, good skin, clear diction - but his job 
is his job. 

Ingrid, they will prevail in the courtroom.  But Truth in History has 
been the winner since my February 1981 postal hearings.
It was proven to me one more time that German people are ill-equipped 
as hypocrites. Very quickly the German penchant for directness and 
honesty comes to the surface - and that's what happened in court 
yesterday.  Germans will be Germans!  [Had you been here], you would 
have seen some live fire exercises in the authoritarian personality 
syndrome in action! Ingrid, these people chafe under this 
Allied-devised and conquerors'-imposed situation and its institutions 
as if they were wearing the proverbial hair shirt. 

What I saw yesterday makes me realize how lucky I was, and how 
fortunate for the German Cause and history it was, that I fought all 
my historic trials in a country under an organically evolved British 
Common Law based legal system.  What we were able to achieve there, 
THEN, would simply have been impossible under the system in place 
here, at this time.  There is a God in Heaven who destined Ernst 
Zundel to do his work and live his most vital and important years in 
an Anglo-Saxon environment.  I am happy about that. All the 
sophistry, the mental barf they spread via the media over the German 
people comes into direct confrontation with eternal truths and 
concepts to the point that it gives me goose pimples.  The tragedy 
for Germany is that the laws were legislated by the very people the 
mass-circulation Bild-Zeitung called "the grand coalition of 
thieves." I agree with you about "excising the evil" - especially 
after I saw how the German system works. 

There is at this time no charismatic leader, male or female, to 
exploit the rampant disintegration.  The German Titanic is severely 
listing, taking on water - and these professional liars are busy 
rearranging the chairs on the deck?  There is a "let them eat cake", 
Marie-Antoinette surreal feeling that has settled like a Smoky 
Mountain ground fog over our fatherland. All those living here and 
under the system know that we are seeing the end of the postwar era. 
I believe that Helmut Schröder's inexplicable stepping back after his 
loud claim to the chancellorship on election night, and also Joschka 
Fisher's slinking quietly into the political wilderness, is so 
totally atypical of those two men that, in my opinion, someone, some 
force from somewhere, must have confronted them with arguments to go 
quietly - but to go! You can be sure that the East Coast did not 
forgive those two men for not joining in the rape of Iraq!  For them 
it was, Game Over!  It was Iraq Payback Time! I am surprised they 
lasted as long as they did!

It is clear that the old order of things is expiring.  I read here 
that the Republican majority - some 28 US senators in President 
Bush's own party - refused to vote for an important piece of 
legislation, about oil of all things!  Oil is Cheney's and Bush's 
power base - and his own party denied him a majority.  That is a 
clear sign that Bush is truly a lame duck president from now on, and 
things also concerning 9/11.  There will be movement. 

How far?  From within prison walls, it's hard to be specific, but 
there is a new fluidity similar to what I felt, sensed and saw before 
the East German and Soviet Union regimes of almost 70 years 
collapsed, imploded silently, became history - gone in spite of 
atomic rockets and submarines.

Tonight they are supposed to have a TV Special Report on the Zundel 
Case - shades of Canada 1985-2000!  It is amazing to me how all this 
developed.  It sometimes is a bit as if life had placed me in the eye 
of a hurricane where there reigns an eerie calm, while all around me 
in a safe distance howling storms whip up gigantic waves in mountains 
of greenish froth which scare untold millions out of their wits. 
Twenty years ago a London Times writer asked:  "What manner of truth 
is this man Zundel in touch with to create such a furor?"  That's the 
one question I keep asking myself:  What on earth is it, exactly, 
that so unnerves these people?  The incredible over-reaction!  You 
can be sure, Ingrid, that there is an equal mountain of evidence 
implicating U.S. bureaucrats, US spy services and lobbyists 
[conspiring] to throw me out of a country of almost 300 million 
people.  For doing what, exactly?  Asking a five-word question - DID 
SIX MILLION REALLY DIE?  One question?  30,000 words in that little 
essay written 31 years ago by a university student?  Think about the 
disturbance this caused! 

It is this more than strange energy vortex that fascinates me, that 
convinces me that there is some force we do not yet understand, that 
we are approaching or tapping into without even knowing or 
comprehending.  History can be very instructive.  As you know, I have 
taken the long view in all this, and I am not inclined to change my 
attitude.  My belief in an inscrutable but basic order in the cosmos 
has not changed.  I did not survive all these trials, tribulations, 
persecutions, the bombs and the arson, for NO reason.  You could say 
that with all the misfortune which has befallen me - and, by 
extension, now you - I have been very fortunate.  And so will you be 
also!

So, my hard-working wife, I am thinking of you, and looking at your 
gentle, intelligent face - your bookmark does you justice. Ingrid, I 
will keep the dream alive.  It is not geography-bound.
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