Copyright (c) 1998 - Ingrid A. Rimland


August 26, 1998

Good Morning from the Zundelsite:

 

Today's ZGram will the short and to the point: I need your help, because I am going on the offensive with marketing my trilogy/novel "Lebensraum!"

 

As my readers know, my ethnic trilogy - describing what happened to 200 years and seven generations of Russian-German farming families and their American cousins in Kansas under the impact of slowly creeping Communism - has been confiscated as "hate literature" by Canadian Customs.

 

Hundreds of books have disappeared; to my knowledge, only two intended recipients of a set each have been notified. I have some plans for legal retaliation, but first I need to flood the world with knowledge of the content of my books and to generate the necessary publicity for the next step - which may well be a law suit against those who have stolen thousands of dollars' worth of my books.

 

As a first step, I have printed up thousands and thousands of very attractive bookmarks. If I may say so myself, I think they are stunningly beautiful - very tastefully done! They are printed in four-color, and cost to me is 5 cents each.

 

I need each and every one of you to distribute these bookmarks in your neck of the woods among your friends and acquaintances. If you have never contributed to the Zundelsite and have consumed my ZGrams, now is your turn to do your part! This war will not be won by sitting on the fence. There isn't one of you who doesn't have a circle of receptive friends who would be interested in reading these books and who consequently will become strong financial and emotional supporters of my outreach.

 

No doubt you know about church gatherings, social service club meetings, libraries, German stores, restaurants, gift shops, second hand book shops etc. Use your imagination! This is a ***massive*** project, undertaken worldwide, and book sales and additional sponsors resulting from these book sales will help me to sustain our drive for intellectual and cultural liberation in the years to come.

 

I ask those of you, who are willing to help with this project, that you send me a small donation to underwrite the cost of these bookmarks. For instance, for $5, I will send you a packet of 100, and I will pay the postage. You will get them by return mail - and I assure you they are darling and won't embarrass you! I would really appreciate it if all of you could pitch in. With your help, we could exponentially increase our outreach in short order!

 

What is my trilogy about? I re-run a previous review that was first published in Smith's Report and captures the essence of my Revisionist novels:

 

"While historical revisionists have produced no end of factual books analyzing the claim that the Nazis killed six million Jews during the Second World War, they have been notably less successful in creating works of imaginative literature on revisionist themes. Meanwhile, the fictional Holocaust epics of such accomplished hacks as Gerald Green, Herman Wouk, and James Michener have been read, watched and believed by millions of Americans who would never think of delving into Hilberg or Goldhagen.

 

"Ingrid Rimland's Lebensraum! trilogy should help start to change that. Fiction of epic sweep, this three volume work spans two centuries in the history of her own people, the German Mennonites, from their settlement on the Ukrainian steppe under the protection of Catherine the Great, to their despoliation and decimation by the Communists - but not before a heroic few of them, forsaking their pacifist creed, join in a heroic, last ditch defense of Berlin in 1945.

 

"Where lies the revisionism, exactly? Since it is difficult to imagine a novel that depicts the realities that underlay the mythical aspects of the Holocaust, a more feasible literary approach is to counter the history and tribulations of less favored peoples to the proprietors of the better-known (and sometimes overblown) holocausts.

 

"This is the direction taken by Dr. Rimland, already an award-winning novelist for "The Wanderers", the creator and administrator of the Zundelsite, and the amazingly prolific source of that daily nugget of revisionist insight, the ZGram.

 

"The revisionism of the Lebensraum trilogy begins with its name, which, thanks to nearly a century of anti-German propaganda (and the occasional ineptitude of Teutonic sabre rattlers) has come to mean "land to be seized by conquest" rather than the "room to live" that the word actually denotes.

 

 

"Writing from her own experience and from the lore of her family and people, as well as from scholarly works, the author tells how the Neufeld and Epp clans wrested great material riches from the virgin land of East Ukraine and, later, Kansas - not by the sword, but by the plow, and how these hardworking, pious families then lost much, if not all, their worldly treasure to the egalitarian cancers of a leveling "democracy" in the United States and Bolshevism in Russia.

 

"Dr. Rimland, herself born to Mennonites in Ukraine, a survivor of the terrible trek westwards with the Wehrmacht toward the war's end, grown to maturity in a Mennonite settlement in Paraguay, brings a rare sensibility to the task of delineating several generations in the lives of her books' characters.

 

"Lebensraum! is narrated in a voice able to articulate the point of view of a community - as well as to express the yearnings of the powerful and sometimes rebellious individuals who stand out in it or against it.

 

"What results in these three volumes is a tapestry, or better an immense quilt, resurrecting to memory a people at once ordinary and extraordinary, that sought to flee History through piety and hard work - and what happened when History caught up with them.

 

"Ingrid Rimland's Lebensraum! trilogy is not a sentimental idyll nor a sanctimonious lament nor a rebellious rejection of her Mennonite heritage. What it is, in the shape of a compelling story that links continents and generations, culminating with matchless drama and fury in the German capital, is a question that still burns, for Jew and Gentile as well as for the German Mennonite:

 

"How best to preserve and protect those two great underpinnings of any stable community, land and heritage - or blood and soil?"

 

I ask unabashedly that, if you order bookmarks, you reimburse me for the printing costs of these beautiful promotional items - because I know my enemies, many of whom are subscribing to my ZGrams, just to snoop and do me harm, thinking that I do not know them! :) They would simply request tons of freebee bookmarks and dump them at the nearest dump! If that happens, at least I will have my money back and can rapidly re-order reprints. I hope you can see my point.

 

If all pitch in and blanket their area, give some of these bookmarks to bookworm friends as gifts, send them out with their personal letters etc. we will have an impact beyond our wildest dreams. You may request your batches by writing to:

 

Ingrid Rimland, Ed.D.

6965 El Camino Real, # 105-588

La Costa, CA 92009

 

Thought for the Day:

 

"No matter how difficult things might become, you are doing God's work! Our opponents are motivated by hate and talmudic vengeance, fear and loathing.

 

"Revisionism on the other hand is motivated by love of our people, culture and 2000 years of Western Civilization.

 

"Good luck and god speed in all your endeavors!"

 

(Letter to the Zundelsite)


Back to Table of Contents of the Aug. 1998 ZGrams