Right after the May 1995 Zundel-Haus arson, I helped for the first time with the Zundel Power letter, editing it eagerly, jazzing it up a bit. I was brand new in those days to the Zundel operation and had my own ideas. I had read a few previous Power Letters and thought they were too "folksy" and much too cluttered, image-wise.
In those days I didn't yet know what I know now - that the sin of all Zundel-Haus sins is to waste some white space on any sheet of paper! Where there is even one square millimeter left without a letter or a comma or a picture or a slogan, Ernst will get out his graphic arts scalpel and fill it up with something.
I have an iron principle, by contrast, that says that words must breathe. I like white space around my paragraphs and sentences. This is a cardinal rule in my household - around my sentences, there must be elbow space.
So there I sat, naive and innocent. I had just spent a sooty afternoon designing a "New Ernst" in Power Letter Number 188 or some such - when to my horror, and I mean horror! in walked a formidable Mr. Zundel, clutching his scalpel in his fist, and grimly stuck the photograph of a raccoon, for crying out loud! right in that itsy bitsy white space left, the size of a small postage stamp!
What ***was*** this? A Revisionist raccoon?
As I learned next, this was not any old raccoon. This was a ***survivor*** raccoon - for all intents and purposes, a Holocaust Raccoon! Mr. Zundel explained that to me, along with a lesson or two on the fact that his readers ***liked*** pictures of rodents! It was part of the Zundel-Haus magic!
There was an edge to this that I have never quite forgotten. Now I know better what he meant. When it comes to his Zundel letters, I no longer mess with white space - no siree, I don't! No way! Not me!
If you want to know what I mean - and what the Zundel struggle is ***really*** all about - I ask you to forego a movie ticket and put aside some $10 or so as a goodwill donation, and I will ship you something you are not ever likely to forget.
It's called "Ernst Zundel: His Struggle, His Life" and in German, "Ernst Zundel: Sein Kampf für Deutschland."
It is a small summary booklet, very tightly packed. There's not much white space there. It tells in sparse, clipped words of the Herculean, karmic struggle of "The Big Z" against the Chosenites.
You read through that, my friend, and you will be in awe! You will know that's no ordinary man. That is a giant of strong will - a giant among midgets.
Here are some telling paragraphs of our beloved, "folksy" Mr. Z - from Power Letter, June of 1999:
To my friends worldwide!
* Summer has arrived with a vengeance in Canada. Shops and sidewalk vendors offer a variety of flowers and seedlings - and everywhere one looks, people seem to feel a need to spruce up their lives with colors and sweet smells, even if it is only a flower tray on a balcony or a flower bed of one or two square yards in front of a downtown house. I have always found that to be a good sign. I think I have never met a nasty person who loved flowers - just as I have never met a beekeeper who was not a deep-thinking and independent person.
* New life has also arrived at the Zundel-Haus in the form of four little baby raccoons - as lively and pretty with their blazing black eyes and moist button noses as if they just stepped out of some child's picture book. They don't seem to mind my presence as I write my newsletters or draft texts for booklets, sitting on my sun deck, below which they live their young lives. They are clean, neat and respectful. They use the eaves troughs, and only the eaves troughs, for their toilet, never soiling anything else. Their mother keeps a wary eye on the hairy-chested human hulk who is soaking up the sun while quietly watching her litter. Only the father hisses when one comes too close to his brood.
* As soon as the sun has set, the whole raccoon family climbs down some massive Chinese Sumach tree, past video cameras and searchlights, past barbed wires and tall security fences, and goes off into the neighborhood to forage for food. They return past midnight and walk single file past the back of the building, in full view of the video monitoring system, as if it was meant to keep them safe. Almost one hour later to the minute, a neighborhood cat slowly patrols the area in the opposite direction, pausing in the lights of the camera which electronic sensors have triggered.
* The Zundel-Haus itself is a beehive of activities these days, as friends, comrades, book customers, suppliers, postmen, delivery people, couriers, building and fire inspectors, copier repair men and telephone technicians come and go, while the Zündel HQs are being repaired and maintained on the go, and as the intellectual struggle continues. Volunteers arrive early in the morning to stick labels on envelopes, to copy, print, collate and stuff thousands upon thousands of newsletters and advertising mailouts, which go daily to the far corners of the earth. Millions of sheets of papers go through this building annually on their long journeys to distant continents, all bearing the message of historical truth.
* I am always awed by this miracle of communication between human beings, and often quietly reflect about the near magic involved in this process. What is it that touches people? What makes them respond? Why do they remain loyal to me for decades? What chords are touched in their souls that would make them send in their free-will donations, year-in and year-out, often quite a sacrifice to many, money which they save by denying themselves some things that they would undoubtedly enjoy?
* What would have made some old lady, thousands of miles away, who only heard me give one speech in her town, years ago, send me $20 a month, religiously? Recently she passed away, and I was notified by her attorney that she had left me a Canada Savings Bond in her will. She never told me. She just quietly went ahead and made the arrangements.
* This week I had a call from the wife of a supporter who had been very active in the 1985 and 1988 trials. He had worked for a cheese wholesaler at the time and supplied our team with a great variety of delicious cheeses. Then he got ill. He asked to be taken off the mailing list, and formally said an emotional good-bye. He went off to Europe to see relatives, went to Australia to see his daughter, and faded from view. He died quietly.
* His widow, who is not at all interested in what I do, called me out of the clear blue sky and asked that I come by to pick up boxes of books - rare, beautiful German books, written by authors on topics I had never heard of, like "Friedrich der Große über Religion" books by Fieldmarshall Ludendorff and other famous Germans. Why did I get those books? Why not his daughter or grandchildren? His widow simply said: "My husband felt you were the most deserving." She shook my hands; we waved good-bye; and I am sure I won't see that lady again - but my friend lives on, through his books.
* This was the second time within this month that this has happened to me - where spouses who were not and are not interested in Revisionism or politics have honored the wishes of their mates, sometimes after a few years have gone by, and contacted me with a simple request: "When can you come to pick up those books and tapes?" Miraculously, my severely decimated, almost totally arson-destroyed library, which I so loved, is being replenished, book by book. What is the secret at work here?
* In closing let me thank my many friends and supporters one more time around the world! I am awed by your response and outpouring of joy and affection and, yes, even praise and accolades for our long and drawn-out struggle you have sent my way for the legal victories in April. My thanks go, of course, to the two attorneys, Doug Christie and Barbara Kulaszka, and to the witnesses like Dr. Faurisson, Mark Weber, Dr. Robert Countess, Bernard Klatt and my ethnic German leaders - and the others of the team, all of whom worked very hard for so many months - actually over two years!
* There are many, many hundreds of silent helpers, too numerous to mention, in many parts of the world, who all did their share to make these stunning, albeit possibly only temporary, victories possible. They could not have been achieved without the efforts of each and every one of you! As per usual, I was really only the means, the way, the tool which an inscrutable destiny has chosen to fight this important cause! I am proud of you all, proud of the team, proud of what we are doing, and promise you that I will not forget your sacrifices in love, devotion, time and money. Thank you from the bottom of my heart!
Ernst Zündel
If you're in Canada, write to the Zundel-Haus at 206 Carlton Street, Toronto, Ontario, Canada, M5A 2L1.
All others get this booklet posthaste by writing to me at 6965 El Camino Real, # 105-588. La Costa, CA 92009.
I guarantee you won't be sorry for the money that you spent to meet a real hero. If you read through that booklet, you will be changed forever. You will have met a man and not a wimp. There's not another one like that one - not one in the entire world. And there is not a Chosenite on earth who doesn't know I speak the truth on what this man has done, and who he is, and why ***he*** speaks the truth.
Ingrid