I. STEVEN M. WASSERSTROM, of
[address
withheld], Portland, Oregon
97202, USA, WILL SAY AS FOLLOWS:1. I am the Moe and Izetta Tonkon
Associate Professor of Judaic Studies
and the Humanities at Reed College in
Portland Oregon, USA. I have taught at
Reed College for the past twelve years,
where I most recently served four years
as chair of the Religion Department. I
also serve on the national
Anti-Semitism and Extremism Committee
of the American Jewish Committee. I
have been President of the Institute
for Judaic Studies in the Pacific
Northwest and Co-Chair of the
Comparative Studies Section of the
American Academy of Religion.
2. In my capacity as a member of the
Board of Directors of the Coalition for
Human Dignity, a civil rights
organization that monitors organized
hate groups. I have had repeated
occasion to deal with the visits of
David Irving to our area of the
United States. What follows derives
from these activities undertaken in
cooperation with the Coalition for
Human Dignity.
3. David Irving has lectured in the
Portland Oregon area four times in the
past seven years: 16
October 1992 (at Mount Hood
Community College, in Gresham, a suburb
of Portland); 10
October 1994 (at a church in
Southeast Portland); 15 October 1995
(in Clark County Washington, adjacent
to Portland); and 18 April, 1998 (in
Vancouver Washington. adjacent to
Portland).
4. I attended the lecture given by
David Irving on 16 October 1992. On
Friday afternoon, 16 October 1992, I
entered the Mount Hood Community
College building where Irving was
scheduled to speak. There were a number
of skinheads, identifiable by their
distinctive hair-style, clothing,
tattoos and demeanor, providing
security. inside and outside the
building. Irving stood behind a table
on which were displayed books,
pamphlets (including the Leuchter
Report), audio and video tapes,
colour photographs of himself, and
stacks of publicity materials for the
new edition of his books Hitler
's War, and the German edition
of Göring. Playing in the
background was a tape of a speech he
delivered in Germany, in German. I
requested and received his autograph.
The audience was comprised of mostly
middle-aged, and older, males.
5. Michael T. "Reinhold"
Clinton, an apparent leader of the
group that sponsored the lecture, the
Siegfried Society, introduced Irving as
one of the most widely read authors in
the world. As a Director of the CHD, I
have had occasion to monitor Irving's
internet website. In Irving's official
Focal Point Press web-site, it is
stated that "Mr Irving never had any
contact with a Michael Clinton (see
http://www.fpp.co.uk/Legal/Penguin/juliusaffid130598.html.).
After Clinton's introduction. Irving
took the podium. He carried a rolled up
poster, which, when he unrolled it,
comprised a glossy photo of himself,
topped by a banner advertising and
providing details of his 1991 - 1992
world tour. He read from the poster the
names of countries he had visited. This
led him into a vituperative tirade
against those countries that have
banned and/or expelled him, including
Germany, Austria, and Italy. Mr Irving
said that a group in Los Angeles had
just succeeded in getting him banned
from entry to
Canada.[*]
He has had buckets of slime
poured on him and, in his London
neighborhood of Mayfair, surfaces have
been covered with stickers proclaiming
SMASH IRVING. 
He
made it unmistakably clear that the
enemies who were persecuting him were
Jews. For example, he said that, in
Germany, "the Jews" were
allowed into the hallways of the
courts during protest demonstrations
against him. Mr Irving claimed that he
was not anti-Semitic.
6. He then said: "I may be
wrong...[but]...It is the
prerogative of a free people to be
wrong". He said that the opposition
refused to debate him. He then cited
Winston Churchill to the effect that
the historian is obliged to say what
happened and why it happened.
7. With his newly revised
best-selling Hitler 's War
("Nearly 1,000 pages, Over 50
Colour Photos Never Published Before")
on the podium, he launched into an
extemporaneous defense of his Holocaust
denial. The brunt of these remarks was
the non-existence of the gas chambers.
He made the following statements:
a) That Auschwitz
was a brutal slave-labor camp.b) There are "psychological"
reasons why survivors' testimonies
are unreliable. For example,
survivors' "pride" may compel them
to fabricate gas chambers, instead
of the more mundane reality; that
they "peeled potatoes and dug
ditches".
c) He ridiculed Elie Wiesel,
misquoting Wiesel to the effect that
Wiesel could distinguish between the
crematorium smoke of Jews and
non-Jews. He then ascribed this
claim to a kind of survivor
one-ups-man-ship.
d) That yes, Auschwitz was
terrible; that "even one death" by
criminal means is deplorable.
e) That yes, the Nazis killed
thousands of Jews, especially by
means of killing-squads on the
Eastern Front in 1941.
f) He described Adolf Eichmann's
anguish on witnessing one such mass
shooting. Eichmann had been standing
so close to the event that the
brains of a Jewish baby splattered
on his greatcoat, which his
chauffeur had to wipe off. After
recounting this, Mr Irving concluded
by saying: "You don't make up this
kind of detail, ladies and
gentlemen".
g) That there were never any gas
chambers, at Auschwitz or elsewhere,
he says. He cited numerous pieces of
apparent evidence:
i) That Zyklon B was
used only for delousing;ii) that the chambers were
structurally incapable of use for
mass extermination, citing the
existence of windows easily
broken for ventilation;
iii) that the present chambers
at Auschwitz were built
by the Poles in the 1950s "so
that tourists would have
something to gawp at";
iv) that the curator of the
Auschwitz Museum, Francisk Piper,
had confided this fact to a
distinguished historian,
who in turn told Irving, "over
wine at 3:00 in the morning"
though that historian
subsequently denied the
occurrence of this event;
v) that Allied aerial photos,
which he holds up, show no
chambers; that the Leuchter
Report (which was for sale
along with other Irving wares at
a table in the foyer)
forensically demonstrates that
the chambers were not Zyklon B
extermination chambers.
8. He did not seem to dispute that
hundreds of thousands of Jews were lost
by other causes, for example: at the
hands of the killing-units, cholera
inside and outside the camps, Allied
bombings and Russian atrocities. He
also said that the Haganah
(Jewish underground of Palestine) had
spirited many to Israel, where they
promptly exchanged Hebrew names for
their German names, thus accounting for
the misapprehension that they had been
killed. The implication was that far
less than 6,000,000 Jews had died in
the Holocaust.
9. While saying yes, many Jews died,
Mr Irving also said: but so did many
others. He held up a color photo of the
British firebombing of Wurtemburg
[sic],
in which there were "20,000 dead in 20
minutes". Mr Irving stated that if a
Jewish survivor says to him, "But Mr.
Irving, what happened to my family who
were entirely lost?", he would reply,
and counseled the audience to respond,
that there were many German families
who were also entirely lost.
10. Mr Irving compared the attempts
of those to silence his championship of
these "truths" to the silencing of
Galileo and said: "The myth of the
Holocaust is great big colorful balloon
waiting to pricked, and I am that
prick". Laughter ensued. At the
conclusion of his talk, some 20
listeners awarded him a standing
ovation.
11. Richard Flowers of Boring
Oregon, a well-known Christian Identity
activist in our region, and head of the
Boring Oregon Christian Patriot
Association, also attended the 1992
lecture. In an interview in the
"Clackamas County Review" (May 28-June
3, 1992) (please see Appendix, pages 1
to 3 [not
posted]), Flowers told a
reporter that "God created man for
woman, period. The Oregon Citizens
Alliance (a Christian Right group that
has proposed restrictions on gay and
lesbian rights) has a good start on the
homo issue, but I don't think they have
gone far enough. The Bible says to
stone them but you really wouldn't need
to shoot too many of them to get the
point across". Through the Christian
patriot Association's book distribution
operations, the group peddles Holocaust
denial material such as Arthur
Butz's "The Hoax of the Twentieth
Century" and "The Leuchter Report".
They also offer for sale books on
explosives and munitions, and white
supremacist books which advocate racist
and anti-Semitic murder, such as
Christian Identity figure Richard
Kelly Hoskins' 1991 book
"Vigilantes of Christendom", which
argues that "Identity" believers should
commit murder in small, tight-knit
groups so as to avoid detection by law
enforcement (please see Appendix, pages
4 to 8).
The contents of this statement are
true to the best of my knowledge and
belief
Dated this day 21 of January
1999
Steven M. Wasserstrom
