Christmas being in the wings and lots of errants needing to be done, I have decided for today and tomorrow to run some excerpts from Ernst Zundel's Power letter - so I can decorate my Christmas Tree, think good thoughts of my Loved Ones, and dream about a Cool, White Christmas.
These monthly Zundel missives are simply written and come straight from the heart. I do some editing, but I have learned to leave alone the folksy Zundel style because that's what speaks to his supporters.
Here Ernst sums up two decades of battling the Holocaust Promotion tribe:
To my friends around the world:
The last newsletter of this fading 20th century is about to be born. That's how I usually feel when I get ready to write my monthly report to my worldwide friends and supporters: birth pangs! The usual dilemma immediately confronts me as I put pen to paper. What do I write about? Which issues can I cover in how much detail? My mind sweeps over the names on my mailing list, and I try to figure out what would interest the family of potato farmers in Patagonia, living literally at the other end of world, who have supported me for a generation? How about the rancher in Texas or the sheep farmer in the outback of Australia? What will be of interest to him and his lovely, hardworking wife? Will the American airline pilot, or the Canadian stewardess, find the same things of interest? Or will they be bored and put the newsletter aside? Will the engineering professor be disinterested when I write about an emotional visit with my newly born grandchildren, or will the hard-nosed stockbroker or futures trader send me a terse note saying "Take my name off your list"? When I write about AIDS or what transmits or causes it - because I always see a larger picture beyond our rather narrow ethnic struggle - will I be told again, "We are decent people! We don't want to hear about this filthy stuff!"? Or what about others, who hate to read about court cases and legal proceedings - how much more can they stomach? How many historically important details and how much legal mumbo jumbo can I inflict on them before they turn off and tune out? This "communicating" with people far and wide of diverse backgrounds, age, and gender does have its pitfalls and limits.
Sometimes I am amazed that people are interested at all in my trials and tribulations. When I write about new, broader fields of interest I have developed - such as mind control, the possibility that our enemies are targeting individual leaders of the patriotic movement by remote, even mind-controlled agents who might pretend to love their victims but at the same time neutralize and destroy their lifelong work - will I lose supporters? Will they say, "Wow! That Ernst is going wacko!"? What are my responsibilities to my readers - but also to myself? Am I supposed to be a "One Issue Holocaust Candidate"? Sometimes I chafe at the bit - like a free-roaming mustang that is tethered to a cowboy's lasso - in my case, to the pole of the "Holocaust"!
I know there is more to Ernst Zündel than counting the "victims" or juggling and comparing the numbers. I am tired of forever playing in the "playpen" into which my enemies have forced or maneuvered me over the decades.
However, there is also the reality of survival as a person - actually real economic survival. My powerful, well-connected enemies have seen to it that my once lucrative advertising art business was totally destroyed by the attendant negative publicity of my two Holocaust trials. I remember delivering some photos I had retouched for the cover of Canada's prestigious MacLean's Magazine the morning of December 28, 1983 at 11 o'clock to the Art Director. That was only two hours before I had to appear in court on two charges of having published "false news" about the Holocaust and bankers etc. On the way to the courthouse, three friends of mine and I were attacked by approximately 40 members of the Jewish Defense League. We were quickly surrounded by this aggressive mob. I was knocked to the ground by a karate chop to the back of my neck by some Jewish demonstrator who attacked me from behind while his friends punched and pummeled us from the front. The scene appeared on the Evening Television News and made headlines in the local papers the next day - and my life was changed forever!
Within days, there were 24-hour, around-the-clock demonstrations around my house. The Jewish Defense League opened packages, which were to be delivered to my business by courier services, in full view of the public. The police did nothing! Within days, my business was ruined! Customers refused to run the gauntlet and were rightfully afraid to be manhandled when trying to get across the picket line where these Jewish terrorists had stationed themselves, some having brought German shepherd dogs along on leashes to intimidate people. It was like scenes out of some surreal horror film. Pickup trucks would bring steaming hot food, bagels, donuts and coffee to my tormentors around the clock. I could not risk a confrontation with them and had to ask my friends who helped me guard my building not to cause an incident, for I was already facing two criminal charges with this "false news" accusation and was free on $10,000 property bond and $1,000 cash bail - with strict bail conditions. I learned then - and quickly! - that standing up for truth and principles had very serious security and, above all, economic consequences.
Interestingly, one of my last customers was a Russian Jew who relied on my skills to advertise his products for years. We got along well. He finally quit because, he said, his accountant was Jewish as well - and if it became known in his community that he still gave me work, he, too, would be ruined!
I was able to survive for a while because I was able to sell some of my oil paintings and water colors - but within months my graphic art business, which I had built over decades of hard work, was dead! The fear and boycott worked!
Against this background these newsletters were born - by now, almost 250 issues of them! Never in my faintest dreams did I ever think that one day I would have to earn my keep by writing, much less doing radio and TV shows, or by selling videos about the Holocaust. I remember that the prospect frightened me at the time, for I knew that I was a good artist, that some of the biggest companies in Toronto and as far away as New York and advertising agencies in Hong Kong and Alaska were using me for their work - but writing? That was different! What did I know about writing?
Echoing in my mind were my Russian-Jewish-English professors' admonishments at Montreal's Sir George Williams University: "Mr. Zündel - content excellent, spelling okay, grammar non-existent!" And later on I found out that Dr. Ingrid Rimland, who had a grammar teacher mother, was so offended by the poor quality of my writings that she did not contact me for years because I projected such a "poor image."
Greg Raven from the Institute for Historical Review referred to my newsletters, when he introduced me as speaker at the 1994 IHR convention, as having more the look of "ransom notes" than that of an important political-historical publication. Other competitors accused me of projecting purposely such a poor, hillbilly image to evoke sympathy by pleading lack of funds and poverty.
Another one, an otherwise well-educated Englishman, called me to request that I not send him any more "begging letters" to help me with the financing of my trials - he said he "knew" that those Nazis, who had escaped to Antarctica and Latin America with all those gold teeth extracted from gassed Jews, were financing me! This, by the way, is a recurring theme with some of my Jewish "hate callers" - that I was only able to sustain this "war against the Jews", as they like to call it, because of all this secret Nazi loot I was supposedly benefitting from. Others, of course, steadfastly think that some Arab oil sheiks have been bankrolling me.
The truth lies somewhere else, as per usual!
No sooner was I charged by the cops on behalf of the Holocaust Promoters when the first newspaper articles and TV interviews were broadcast and people took notice. They looked me up in the phone book and, like magic, little by little total strangers, most of them not even German, began to send me small amounts of money. I thanked each and every one of them with some hand-scribbled note and included some book ads, handbills, flyers and some news releases. They must have copied those and passed them on to their friends - because the list of supporters grew and grew and grew!
Soon I had a sizable "political" mailing list. People asked so many questions about me, my work, the Holocaust, that even two secretaries could not handle all the correspondence. A circular letter or newsletter was born. The rest is history!
There is one more wrinkle in this story which is in a way amusing - and also telling. Sometimes my greatest helpers have been my enemies. For instance: This last month I received a handwritten note, in poor English, from a person in Belgium. The man wanted to buy some UFO books of mine he had seen advertised on a "Zundl" website on the Internet.
I wrote him a polite note pointing out that I had not advertised these books in 25 years - that my enemies had created these fake websites to create embarrassment for me by painting me as some weirdo who believed in UFOs emanating from Antarctica, and that the prices of the UFO books I had written, based on actual German experiments with circular flying craft, were 1972 prices. I added that I would be willing to send him photocopies of these books, most of which were out of print for decades. I told him that I was now interested in other topics - and included ads for Revisionist books, videos, audios etc.
Within two weeks I had an airmail letter back with a pre-payment cheque in the amount of DM 500, which is about $350 for every item advertised in those flyers. He was overjoyed to have found access to the Revisionist material.
The same happened with that strange book by Goodrich Clarke about the Savitri Devi "Nazi High Priestess" title, where my career and thoughts are mentioned in a rather inaccurate, odd way. I received all kinds of letters as a result of the book and have turned many a letter writer into a Revisionist book buyer.
Two more anecdotes and reminiscences and then we will have to pass on to more serious topics.
In 1985, on the day of my conviction to 1 1/2 years in jail and three years' probation for publishing "Did Six Million Really Die?", CNN's Crossfire's producer called my house. He wanted to do a show that evening with Novack - I believe the other man's name might have been Bradley - and me as a guest. After returning from jail, out on bail, I found the note and asked my attorney, Doug Christie what I should do, since the judge had given me a sweeping gag order to boot. Doug advised me not to risk my bail, which would have meant immediate arrest, forfeiting my chances for an appeal and certain deportation to Germany. I realized the danger but I also realized the reach of CNN and prayed for guidance. In the end, I asked Doug to come along as my "legal guardian angel" and sit next to me in the studio to interject and stop me if I broke my bail conditions. CNN agreed. We did the interview. Doug did not stop me even once - and as a result of this program, I found an angel in a faraway place.
That evening, a German American business man who lived in Hawaii came home from a party with friends. Before going to bed at 2 a.m., he flicked through the channels and saw me on CNN hammering Novack and Bradley about the Holocaust, war crimes etc. He told me two days later on the phone that he was fascinated and moved by my spirited defense of the Germans. It took him those two days to call the station in Hawaii, from there to call Atlanta, from there CBC in Toronto who had filmed and forwarded by satellite my interview live to be passed on to the CNN headquarters in Atlanta. It turned out this man had been a 19-year-old soldier in the Wehrmacht during the Battle of the Bulge. He became a US prisoner of war, came to Canada after the war, lived in Toronto for a while and then moved to the USA, ending up in Hawaii. The man appreciated my work and was so full of compliments about what I did, my courage etc. that I was actually a little embarrassed and became all choked up by so much praise. That man became a supporter from that day on! When I was in serious financial trouble because of the trials and Human Rights Hearings, he came to my rescue, again and again - in the end, all thanks to CNN who wanted to do a hatchet job on me.
The ZDF interview... was picked up by a German farmer on his satellite dish in faraway Southwest Africa, the former German "Schutzgebiet" or protectorate - today called Namibia. You have to admit that's about as far away from Toronto as you can get. He was so thrilled by the program that he looked up my name - don't ask me how; he did it! And this week's mail brought a Thank You letter to me, attached to which was a Eurocheck for DM 1,000! This cheque came at a time when donations to our work are traditionally smaller and slower in coming because people spend their money on gifts for the family - grandchildren, wives, husbands etc. This Eurocheck paid for almost all the office supplies and new hole punch machine I had to purchase this week for the Judicial Review documents we had to prepare - and those expenses do not cover the $1,100 airfare for Doug Christie's flight or his and Barbara Kulaszka's legal fees for preparation of Books of Authority and the actual court appearances! - so, yes, miracles happen to Revisionists, too!
Having said all that, I will let you now in on a secret. While I agonize over what I should write, and what I maybe should be careful with, I harken back to the woman who gave me life - and I take my mother's advice, for she was seldom wrong. She told me over and over again, in Swabian dialect, of course: "To thine own self be true!" and ". . . sprich so wie der Schnabel dir gewachse isch!" - write and speak the way your beak is grown! In other words, write from your heart. Pour your soul out. Use your own judgment - and, above all, follow your own instinct. Or, as Adolf Hitler used to say: "Think with your blood."
So this is not only my New Year's Resolution but also my Millennium Resolution - and since thoughts are immortal, I think that this is a pretty good plan. Think with your blood! Follow your instincts! Which, of course, immediately obligates you to make sure that you do not poison your blood - that magic fluid which pulsates through your heart, veins and arteries to nourish and keep alive our body and keeps clean the temple of our soul.
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Thought for the Day:
"The winds and waves are always on the side of the ablest navigators."
(Edward Gibbon)