New
letter from Fred Toben Adelaide Institute
director Dr Fred Toben is held
without trial in a German jail on account
of materials posted on his Australian
Website, to which the notorious German
public prosecutor Hans-Heiko Klein
[picture]
had taken exception. Toben, an Australian
revisionist, was arrested in Klein's
Mannheim, Germany, office in April 1999.
The letter has just [Saturday, July
31, 1999] reached London, evidently
delayed by German censorship
authorities:
7 June 1999 Dear David: Greetings from Cell
1354 at Mannheim Prison, and thank you for
your publicising my arrest
on
your website.
Your print-out, together with about 50
related items and 30 greeting cards, now
graces my cream-coloured cell walls.
Although the stark reality of actual
physical incarceration is still there,
when I look at the various items, I
momentarily imagine I am back home in my
study. I note in Dr Gerard Henderson's
article in The Age/SMH, of April 27 that
he quotes your ABC
Radio AM comments of 10 April: "...
naive and foolish in the extreme. But
that's one of the endearing charms of the
Australian people; they are nice, simple,
innocent people who don't believe that ...
in the Northern Hemisphere the laws are
different."  Assuming
that you have been correctly quoted let me
say the following: I may be naive, but I
nurture that kind of naiveté
because it permits me to perceive things
without mediation -- without crippling
prejudice. Staatsanwalt Klein
[right] is so obsessed with his
'Nazis under every bed' that he cannot
open his mind to new and perhaps
uncomfortable historical facts that
threaten his much-loved Holocaust dogma.
Live reflection becomes sterile ritualism
which regards new information as a
transgression -- revision does not take
place and thus the mind stops thinking
My aim of bringing the conflicting
parties together has only partially been
successful. Still, I managed to speak to
some judges, public prosecutors, and
lawyers in Germany before Mr Klein stopped
my work. I am appalled at their ignorance
about the homicidal gas chamber
allegation. This stupid concept of
'Offenkundigkeit' has dummed-down the
Germans to a terrible degree -- even
judges said to me that they were not
really capable of judging the details of
the gassing story as to their veracity
because that is not necessary according to
§130, et al. As an educator I do not even give up on
opening Mr Klein's eyes to the basic facts
of my argument, though I fear that Mr
Klein is actually well informed on all
aspects of the Revisionists' theses. That
is his moral problem -- he knows the truth
but continues to persecute. I am tempted
to generalise and say that his 'typical
German' authoritarian mind-set prevents
him from opening his mind to new impulses.
A police officer has informed me that
Klein used to play a good game of football
at one time and that his politics has
always been thoroughly left-wing. Well, I
have a number of supporters who used to be
'left-wing' and have no love for Nazi
ideology but seek the truth about those
homicidal gas chambers allegations at
Auschwitz. Again, as an educator, I do not
give up on any student and I see Mr Klein
as a naughty, unruly, and loutish
unwilling learner who may be led to the
light, away from his self-created
conceptual prison as a self-confessed
Nazi-hunter. In 1997 I met Rabbi Cooper,
Prof.
Eberhard Jäckel, et al, and so
came in contact with intellectuals who are
in open denial about Auschwitz. Likewise
this year -- I now understand why the
Mannheim judiciary is traumatised because
of the Deckert case, which saw
Judge Orlet courageously give
Deckert a good character-reference. This
Orlet-paralysis is still deeply rooted
within Mannheim-German judicial circles.
However, I shall venture a prediction --
like yours of some years ago -- that the
myth will not last up to the Year 2030
which is Ignatz Bubis' wish. We
shall make certain that the truth will
emerge a long time before that palatable
for German consumption. You see, David, like you, I seek the
dialogue with my so-called 'enemy'. You
were friendly and approachable towards
Prof. Jäckel and
Fleming -- until they broke the trust
you had given them. I have certainly been
disappointed by Mr Klein's immoral
behaviour in having me arrested, but that
is only a sign of this man's problem in
being mentally challenged. He remains
within his own conceptual prison -- he is
not free. He has not, to my knowledge,
ever embraced the Socratic method of
enquiry, though his side-kicks, Messrs
Schenker and Mohr claim to
be familiar with Popper's falsification
principles. I'm amazed how an admission of
fallibility is understood by some as a
kind of weakness when in fact it admits
that our knowledge acquisition is forever
a growth process. For example, Mr
Jeremy Jones, "the Foreign Minister of
Australian Jewry" as you so aptly
described him, stated in the May issue of
The Australia/Israel Review:
"Despite some of the more wide-eyed
reportage, Fredrick Toben does not
describe himself as an expert or authority
in any area of history. To the contrary,
he has written: 'I am not a historian and
I have massive knowledge gaps and so I
approach the 'holocaust' topic from my
field which is philosophy." This comment
causes me to smile because Jones regards
you as a mere writer! I think it is
obvious who has mental problems. Jones
cannot produce 30-odd history books, as
you can! And yet Jones doesn't like you
either. Does he like anyone? So, David, I'm
nearing the end of this letter to you
and wonder whether it will be used by
Mr Klein as evidence that I am
communicating with a most undesirable
person -- who has also offended against
that catch-all §130. Today I
received a note from him in which I am
advised that a letter from
Jürgen Graf addressed to me
has been withheld because its contents
may be used against me in the coming
trial. Think of it, this typewriter was kindly
provided by Günter Deckert's
right-hand man, Eric Rössler.
Does this make me an even greater 'extreme
right-wing' fellow traveller? Guilty
through association? All this
Gesinnungsschnüffelung seems to me so
childish, were it not such a serious
matter of 5 years maximum! Kant's obsession, if we can call it
that, was to establish reason as a guide
to human interaction. Liberation from
one's own Unmündigkeit characterises
a mature moral being. Klein wants to
continue to bevormunden the Jewish
Germans, as Jones wishes to do likewise in
Australia. This, I would say, is a blatant
antisemitic act. Jews are well capable of
defending themselves when it comes to the
matter of the homicidal gas chamber
allegation. The claim of being hurt I do
not accept anymore from those who have
been in this battle as seasoned soldiers,
such as Jones, et al. The Littleton massacre was perpetrated
by two youngsters who felt "hurt and
insulted" by the way their co-students
treated them at school. This morbid sense
of feeling hurt, this lamentable claim of
being a victim of discrimination, is an
immature response to
LIFE. What is
needed in place of this discrimination
concept is a resurrection of a sound sense
of Justice. Whether I will be accorded
justice in Germany before a judiciary that
is still deeply traumatised by the
Orlet-affair remains to be seen. Jones
ends his article with an interesting bet
both ways: "If Fredrick Toben is 'unlucky'
in Germany, it will only be because he has
received a fair trial". How can I receive
a fair trial from judges who are not
expert historians? Regards Frederick
Toben Address: - Fredrick Toben
- Political Prisoner,
- JVA,
- PO Box 103254,
- D-68169 Mannheim,
- Germany
|
write
to David Irving
Arrest
of Dr Fredrick Toben by Mannheim
prosecutor April 9, 1999