Copyright (c) 1997 - Ingrid A. Rimland
This is the second of a series of unabashed fund-raising letters to keep
the ZGrams on the air and to make the Zundelsite not only cost-effective
and independent but to strengthen and broaden our information outreach.
Much more about that coming your way - very soon!
I have many "newcomers" on my ZGram list who know very little
about me and how the Zundelsite was born, soon to become THE angst-provoking,
trepidation-causing, most persecuted cyber critter on the air, unleashing
counter-forces that are awesome!
Sometimes when I am sitting down at my computer, I ask myself: How is it
possible that so much dread can be unleashed by the existence of one smallish
hard disk packed edge to edge with documents our opposition fears the way
the devil fears the crucifix? By the existence one untrammeled website called
the Zundelsite that challenges the so-called Holocaust?
Imagine if we had a thousand Zundelsites - all complementing, reinforcing,
augmenting, backing what we do? The enemy would shriek like the proverbial
banshee that has its tail on fire and drown itself right in the Wannsee
before our very eyes!
How did it come about that it became my self-appointed mission to "out"
the Holohoax? I'll give you a brief sketch:
My background, as "old-timers" in the cyber community know, was
that of a member of a German sect called Mennonites who lived in the Ukraine
for many decades before the Bolshevik terror started wiping them off the
face of the earth in a genocidal, state-sanctioned effort. It is a story
little-told, in bad need of re-telling. Of my own kin, very few survived
the Stalinist purges and the end of World War II, but I was one of them.
My people were utterly apolitical folks who liked to call themselves "Die
Stillen im Lande" - the Quiet Ones in the World. Among them, I grew
up a bit of an outsider. I did not care for their religion because our churchly
leadership was intellectually anemic and quite tyrannical, but I liked everything
else about them: their masterful self-discipline, their ethnic isolationism,
their work ethic, their pride in being German, their diligence, their inner
cleanliness, their scrupulous social deportment, their sense of community
spirit.
Looking back on my upbringing now, I know that we were "racists"
- although I never even heard the word until I came to Canada and then America
and it was heaved in my face by the Jews. To be a "racist" was
something that was supposed to be offensive? That a great surprise to me.
I had just never looked at it that way.
Once I was confronted with the concept as something that was fascinating
because it went against my background and experience, I did a lot of thinking.
But it was not my "cause" - not really! It was simply something
that intrigued me as an intellectual oddity in that it seemed to be socially
useful and appeared to be used as a political whip.
I was supposed to be a - what?! I guess so. If you say so.
The first time I recall hearing about something else - "Revisionism"
- was when I heard about the arson of the Institute for Historical Review
in Southern California. I read an article that said some Jews had called
the media and taken credit for the crime.
It made me curious what could have been in those historical archives at
the IHR that triggered such a vicious act so utterly against all democratic
values. Book burning in America? This was in 1984.
A few more years went by - ten years, to be exact. Looking back at the time
prior to my reading of the Zundel-Haus and a Canadian-German activist called
Ernst Zundel, I don't think I spent a total of three hours in a lifetime
pondering the Holocaust. Like practically everybody else I knew, I took
the Holocaust for granted as having happened, more or less. In my case,
it was rather "less" because I did not swallow everything, but
I must say I swallowed most.
Adolf Hitler gassed the Jews? I guess so. If so say so.
The Holocaust was something that I had internalized without ever wondering
or questioning. I thought that Hitler, hating the Jews as he did as having
caused the Bolshevik Revolution that wiped out my own kin, as I was always
told, most likely did away with them in the last bloody years of the war.
This was a time when all of Europe waded ankle-deep in blood. What was one
puny ethnic minority called "Jews" when so many ethnic minorities
had perished - including MY ethnic minority?
I was kind of irritated by what seemed to me to be this ceaseless professional
wailing - but then, who else in the entire world owned an authentic Wailing
Wall? That's where I dropped the thing. It was not of my world.
In 1994 I sent a donation of $50 to Ernst Zundel and wrote him a rather
long letter. Ernst called the IHR and got them to get me a discount of their
registration fee as an incentive to attend the International IHR conference.
By then, I had listened to a few Zundel tapes and felt a message that rang
true. I went. I saw. I listened.
At this conference, I met a handful of leaders of the Revisionist movement,
including Dr. Faurisson of France, who told us in a hilarious presentation
how he had challenged Michael Berenbaum, Dean of the Holocaust Doctrine
and Dogma at the Washington, D.C.-based Holocaust Museum, how he had poked
a finger at his chest: ".. . . draw me or show me a gaz chammberrrr!
Don't show me hair! Don't show me glasses! Don't show me teeth! Draw me
or show me a gaz chammberrr!"
Our scholarly giant can be quite funny! I laughed so hard I had to gasp
for breath.
Out in the hall at coffee break I overheard a conversation about a thing
called "Internet". It was supposed to be a revolutionary intellectual
tool. Some people were ape over it: "Revisionism to the world!"
Again, a few more months went by. Somewhere along the line, during a Zundel
visit to sunny California to do some television taping, I had dinner with
him and several IHR folks.
Again the Internet came up. I believe it was then that I decided to take
a few classes on how to do a Website.
I might as well have started mastering Chinese! Computereze is alien to
your worthy novelist! Don't even remind me of the agonies of Hypertext Mark-up
Language!
But lo and behold - a beginning was made. I went and signed up an account
with a server called Webcom.
I called the thing I would construct the "Zundelsite" because,
for all I knew, Ernst Zundel was the kind of man deserving of my efforts.
He had taken a sling shot like the Biblical David I still remembered from
my catechism lessons and had flung rock after rock of state-of-the art Revisionism
straight at the forehead of the monstrous, equally mythic Goliath in two
historical Holocaust Trials in 1985 and 1988.
I could as easily have called my site the "Faurisson Site" or
the "Arthur Butz Site" or the "Rassinier Site". But
"Zundelsite" had that faint ring to it that fit right into my
Mennonite ears: Ernst Zundel spoke of racial pride IN ADDITION to search
for historical truth.
Now I was in the cyberworld and started testing waters with my toe. I started
visiting some newsgroups - both in German and English - where people let
off steam about the Holocaust.
I posted a timid message or two - in essence saying very little except that
I had come across an intellectual discipline called Holocaust Revisionism,
and that it was worthy of exploring.
Next thing I knew I was bait!
Some people whom I had never hurt or even challenged - of whose existence
I never even knew! - went after me like a pack of hyenas. They started cyber-stalking
me, harassing me, abusing me and calling me all kinds of filthy names, accusing
me of horrid deeds and motives. Now mind you, up to that time I had been
just one dainty, not-so-little lady with not a social problem in the world
- most people genuinely liked me, and quite a few liked me a lot! And I
am not and never have been the openly aggressive kind, unless I am insulted
and provoked.
I was absolutely horrified at the buckets of slime thrown into my face!
I didn't know that such sewers of mind even existed! I had never seen anything
like it!
A lot of it came from the newsgroup called alt.revisionism, dominated by
a bunch of cyber-terrorists whose self-appointed mission seemed to be to
scare some mighty curious folks away. Away from what? Well, from the ever-so-lofty,
ever-so-righteous, ever-so-unchallenged so-called "Holocaust".
How? With shrieks of "Nazi!" "Racist!" "White Supremacist!"
etc. etc. etc.
Ad nauseam!
That's when I realized that we were talking turf and not just turkey. That
was the start when, right before my very eyes, the Holocaust became the
Holocau$t. $omebody wa$ protecting $omething mighty u$eful - and nefariou$!
The rest is cyber-lore that generations will remember - how Germany first
massively attacked the Zundelsite on orders from the Simon Wiesenthal Center,
blocking thousands of Webcom websites, how Canada became involved, how the
entire Congress of the United States, to a body, did an harmonious, ever-so-mannerly
knee-fall before the Mighty Lobby, declaring "Holocaust Deniers"
the lepers of the land, how someone faceless started spamming Webcom with
almost thirty million messages in a "cyber nuclear attack" - millions
and millions of e-mail, all shrieking "Denial of Service! Denial of
Service! Denial of Service!"
Man, oh man!
When I began to see the dollar signs built right into the Holocaust, the
gutter media behind the Holocaust, the leviathan power behind the Holocaust,
I started seeing history - the kind of history that had to do with qualities
inherent in my race, my background, my people's martyrdom, my people's qualities
of mind and heart that happen not to be the qualities the Holocaust Promotion
Lobby values.
Something within me kicked in place and locked my jaws. It must have to
do with my genes.
There is a sweet story I once read somewhere. I am not sure I remember the
details precisely, but it had to do with an effort to rebuild a destroyed
cathedral. There was this one itsy bitsy little bird that wanted to help,
and day after day, it came fluttering in - bringing a leaf, a bit of twig,
a tiny wooden splinter, three grains of sand, just tidbits, this and that
- and somebody, watching that bird, finally said with a sneer: "What
difference do you think YOU make in building a cathedral?" and the
little bird replied with gritted beak through a mouthful of straw: "One
does what one can!"
Let that be our slogan. We can rebuild our cathedral. If we do what we can.
If ALL of us do what we can.
I ask you today, as I did yesterday, and as I will again ask you tomorrow,
to do what you can to keep the Zundelsite afloat.
Ingrid
___ Yes, I would like to contribute $___ on a monthly basis to keep the
ZGrams going. Please let me know particulars.
___ Yes, I would like to make a one-time contribution of $____ to help bridge
the financial and organizational gap. Give me an address to send my donation.
___ Yes, I am interested and am considering support, but would prefer to
wait and find out more - but I promise I will make a decision on or before
August 31.
___ No, keep your ZGrams to yourself. I would rather spend my money on ____________.
( . . . for you to fill in the blank creatively)