A Really Ugly StoryThe
Free World
and its Freedom of Speech |
[This
is the early draft of a publication being
prepared on the international campaign mounted
to silence to author David Irving since 1989. In
its final form it will be longer, illustrated,
and have links to key documents on which the
narrative is based] [Download
a different and better printed form as a pdf
file] | THE
SMALL PRINT: This is a copyright work. The
manuscript is reproduced as part of the Focal Point
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for personal use, the manuscript may not be
marketed or commercially
traded.
©1998
David Irving. | VER
SINCE DAVID IRVING, an historian with thirty years'
experience writing on the Third Reich, was accepted
by the courts in Toronto in April 1988 to give
expert evidence
for the defence in the landmark case brought
against Ernst Zündel under a Canadian law
dating back to 1892, for spreading "false
information" in April 1988 - the Canadian supreme
court finally acquitted Zündel in August 1992
- certain of the world's organisations have
targeted him for a campaign of harassment at every
level, designed to injure, smear, and if possible
ruin him. Their campaign has
recruited people at every level, from jobless
street-people to dentists, from immigration
officials to prime ministers. The Englishman is
fighting back with every legal means. Here are some
of the milestones, large and small, in that
fight. |
At the
Zündel trial in 1988 Mr Irving testified that
there was no evidence, at least in the archives in
which he had researched for many years, that Hitler
had ever ordered the physical extermination of the
Jews. He was so impressed by the persuasiveness of
the Leuchter Report, the defence exhibit reporting
the investigations of Frederick A Leuchter, the
leading execution technology consultant employed by
U.S. penitentiaries, that he published in the
summer of 1989 an illustrated version of this
affidavit evidence in London and announced his
intention of making sure that a copy went to every
school in the land.
David Irving had
first visited Canada in 1968, starring as
guest-challenger on the Canadian Broadcasting
Company's popular television quiz Front Page
Challenge on February 26 of that year. The
Panelists: Pierre Berton, Betty Kennedy, Lister
Sinclair, and Gordon Sinclair (they guessed the
challenger's identity). In 1986 he had
organised a speaking tour in Australia and New
Zealand, and then across Canada, promoting first
his Australian reprint of Uprising, the history of
the 1956 Hungarian uprising based on CIA and
Hungarian communist party records among other
sources. He followed this with a 1987 tour
promoting his first volume of his Churchill
biography, and in 1989, 1990, and 1991 there were
further tours from west to east across the great
North American nation; at some of these he spoke
about the Zündel trial, and the other great
controversies of history. Each time he
returned, the audience grew in size and so did the
concern of his opponents. The various Jewish
organisations in Canada, where they are
particularly wealthy, had made no attempt at lawful
or traditional criticism of his lectures, but
resorted instead to behind-the-scenes blackmail and
threats to deprive him of his lecture
audiences. Records of the
Attorney-General of Canada, now released under that
country's Access to Information Act, reveal that
for all their public posturing and accusations that
the writer is "inciting hatred against the Jews," a
criminal offence in Canada, and although this is
the method which they have employed to silence
Ernst Zündel, at no stage have they called for
the Briton's criminal prosecution. Equally, although
the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP), the
Ontario provincial police and other police
authorities attend his many meetings because
of |
to
top of page the disorder threatened by these opponents, none
of them ever sees cause to prosecute. This fact bears
emphasising: While publicly citing the country's
"hate laws" as their basis for concern, at no time
do Mr Irving's opponents ever instigate a
prosecution; talking in measured language they
express regret to the newspapers that this
university or that military forum is providing the
writer with prestige and credibility. In this way
they silently seek to gag those who still believe
in free and fair debate. Here as in other
countries the Jewish representatives refuse Mr
Irving's frequent invitations to come on stage and
debate publicly with him (except for one instance
which will be referred to below, in one of the
biggest halls in Ottawa). Instead they apply
clandestine pressure to hotels, restaurants,
military institutions, and universities to cancel
their bookings for him, usually at the very last
moment, and they pile commercial blackmail -
threatening the withdrawal of advertising revenues
- on newspapers and magazines which allow him to
reply or which dare to give favourable coverage to
his published writings and lectures.
The story can open
in North America, with Mr Irving's third
cross-country speaking tour.
February 23, 1989
David Irving speaks at the University of California
at Berkeley, birthplace of the free speech movement
in the United States. Andrew Allen, the local
organiser, has hired the International House
lecture theatre. Since early afternoon opponents
have besieged the hall and tried to block all
access. The writer's police escort forces a path
through the mob into the back of the building and
through the boiler-room into the auditorium. Two
hundred people have been turned away, as the hall
is already full. Allen has however had to put up
$3,500 for extra police security. The next day Irving
speaks at Victoria, in British Columbia, lecturing
on Churchill's role in World War Two. On the
following day he speaks to a large audience at
Vancouver's Pacific National Exhibition Centre, and
on the day after that at the Sandmann Inn in
Kelowna, on "Hitler and the Final Solution finally
Solved." In general these
British Columbia meetings pass off without
opposition.
The campaign opens
in 1989, as the community, as though on a given
signal, begins a mediæval drumbeat of
accusations that the writer, by his incidental
comments on, and analysis of, the established
notions of the Holocaust, is spreading "hatred".
Like "Holocaust" and its derivative "Holocaust
denier", "genocide", and "sensitivity" the word
"hatred" becomes one of the primitive building
bricks of their propaganda campaign. The Atlantic
Jewish Council issues this press release: The Atlantic Jewish
Council views David Irving as a hate-monger whose
ultimate objective is to discredit the Holocaust,
promote the Jewish conspiracy theory and to incite
hatred against the Jewish people.While they do not spell out what they mean by
the "conspiracy theory," it is presumably the
notion that their brethren around the world, who
may never even have met each other, whether in
North America, in Europe, in Australia, New Zealand
or South Africa, secretly conspire and connive
using every means of modern technology to achieve
their aims: nothing, they imply, could be further
from the truth, and it may well be that they
believe it.
February 27, 1989
At Calgary, in Alberta, Mr Irving is interviewed by
a university radio station, and sees that the
interviewer has taken a copy of Hitler's War
out of the university library: "It has been
heavily used, its paragraphs lined and underlined
by countless students," notes Mr Irving pleasurably
in his private diary. He speaks that evening to a
large audience on Hitler's role in the Final
Solution. At Regina and
Winnipeg over the next two days the temperature
drops to minus 20, then minus 31 during the
daytime, but the audiences' enthusiasm here is not
chilled.
March 3, 1989 Word
of his eastward progress across Canada is preceding
him. As Mr Irving arrives in Toronto, he finds that
the evening television news is carrying coverage of
riots threatened when he speaks at Carleton
University in Ottawa on the seventh. It is plain
that |
to
top of page certain community organisations and left-wingers
are now determined to halt his triumphant lecture
tour. Who is behind them?
Where is their money coming from? Harry Bick,
national chairman of the League of Human Rights of
B'nai Brith Canada, makes a scathing attack on Mr
Irving: "Mr Irving has clearly ventured beyond
legitimate historical analysis," says Bick in a
statement issued on Friday March 3.
June 23, 1989 Mr
Irving speaks at Focal Point Publications'
launching of the English edition of The Leuchter
Report, to which he has written a cautious
introduction. Under organized Jewish pressure the
London World Trade Centre cancels the room booked
for the press conference; Jewish organisations lay
siege to his Mayfair flat, to which the press
conference is transferred, and force all entering
newspapermen to identify themselves.
June
20, 1989 A posse of eighty-eight British
Members of Parliament tables an "early day" Motion
condemning Mr Irving--an instrument which is not
debated or voted on, but provides a useful means
for lawmakers to vilify a member of the public from
within the privileged walls of the House of
Commons. The Parliamentary lynch-party includes
kingpins of the House's Jewish community like
Greville Janner and Ivan Lawrence QC, the selfsame
barrister who unsuccessfully defended
the gangster and Searchlight editor
Gerald Gable on housebreaking charges in November
1963 (Gable got caught red-handed burglarizing Mr
Irving's apartment.) Their Motion is given wide
publicity, as is their intent. It
proposes that this House, on the
occasion of the reunion in London of 1,000
refugees from the holocaust, most of whose
families were killed in gas chambers or
otherwise
by Nazi
murderers, is appalled by the allegation by Nazi
propagandist and longtime Hitler apologist David
Irving that the infamous gas chambers of
Auschwitz, Treblinka and Majdendk [sic]
did not exist ever, except perhaps, as the
brainchild of Britain's brilliant wartime
Psychological Warfare Executive; draws attention
to a new fascist publication, The Leuchter
Report, in which this evil calumny appears; and
condemns without qualification such pernicious
works of Hitler's heirs. October 3,
1989 Sender Freies Berlin, the city's
government TV channel, which has invited Mr Irving
to participate in "Berliner Salon"--a televised
discussion with other historians and literary
personalities--withdraws the invitation under
pressure from the Holocaust photo-forger Professor
Eberhard
Jäckel (who authenticated the fake Hitler
Diaries in 1982) and other professors. Mr Irving
arrives in the still-divided Berlin nevertheless;
at a press conference in the Hotel Kempinski he
predicts German reunification "in twelve months"
(Germany is reunified exactly twelve months later,
on October 3, 1990). As the programme
begins, Mr Irving and a hundred friends demonstrate
outside the television studios with banners
proclaiming German historians -- liars and
cowards. Alleging that David
Irving wrote and distributed leaflets in public on
December 11, 1989 with the caption "German
historians - liars and cowards", the Nuremberg city
police commences proceedings against him for
Volksverhetzung ("incitement"). In fact he never
wrote such leaflets, nor handed them out. The
police abandon the case on June
14, 1990.
A PATTERN develops of television companies
inviting Mr Irving to appear on prime-time
programmes ("Ring my Bell", "Central TV Weekend")
then mysteriously cancelling a few hours before air
time. Equally Martin Gilbert, the Jewish biographer
of Winston Churchill, procures Mr Irving's removal
from BBC television projects on the life of the
politician. A campaign begins to fill in Mr
Irving's name on application forms for companies
supplying heavy mechanical engineering equipment
using names like "Mengele Research Ltd.", "F Nick
Cleansing Corp.", "Degesch & Co." October 1989 A
lecture by Mr Irving scheduled at Carleton
University in Ottawa and a speech to a black-tie
dinner at the Royal Military Institute in Toronto
are cancelled after protests by Jewish
groups.
October -- November
1989 A lecture tour of Germany and Austria by Mr
Irving is authorised by the police. Massive
organized communist and Jewish protests lead to the
closure of several meetings. Police inspectors
attend the second hall, which the police then close
as a "fire hazard". The meeting takes place at a
third location unknown to the police. An arrest
warrant is allegedly issued by Salzburg police, and
the remaining speeches are delivered in locations
just across the border, inside Germany. (Mr Irving
has visited Austria several times since, and the
alleged warrant has never been enforced).
|
to
top of page March 1990
Invited to give the keynote speech at the DVU's
mass rally at Passau, on Germany's future role as a
great power, Mr Irving is met on the steps of the
Nibelungenhalle by police officers who hand him a
gagging order, forbidding him to speak. (The order
is later declared illegal by the Bavarian
courts.)
March 1990 The
German government secretly orders Mr Irving
excluded from its borders. "On March 9, 1990 the
Federal German minister of the interior directed
that Mr Irving be turned back when attempting to
enter the Federal Republic of Germany." So reports
the 1990 annual review of Bonn's Office for the
Protection of the Constitution, adding however:
"Irving was not recognized when he entered
Germany." (He has spoken hundreds of times up and
down the country since 1970). "In spite of this he
succeeds in entering Germany again and again as he
is not recognized," states the report of the
crypto-communist Federal Agency for the Protection
of the Constitution (first chief: Otto John, the
notorious later defector to the Soviet Zone of
Germany).
April 21, 1990 Mr
Irving speaks at the Löwenbräu hall in
Munich to two thousand people. He says, quite
truthfully, "By now we know - and I am sure I don't
need to point this out as anything more than an
aside - that there were never any gas chambers in
Auschwitz." Further he states: "We believe that,
just as the gas chambers which the Americans put up
here in Dachau [outside Munich] in the
first few days after the war were fakes, those gas
chamber facilities which tourists can now sightsee
in Auschwitz were set up by Polish authorities
after the Second World War. The German taxpayers
have had to shell out no less than 16 billion
Deutschmarks as a penalty for Auschwitz for a
fake." Police arrest him
outside the hall, as he is heading for his hotel,
on a trumped-up charge ("leading a demonstration")
which is later dropped and replaced by the one to
which German courts allow no defence: challenging
the existence of gas chambers. Michael Schmid, the
Jewish film cameraman [of No.22 Beistadter
Strasse in Wiesbaden] whom organizer Ewald
Althans has allowed in, accepting his assurances,
to film the Löwenbräu meeting for Spiegel
TV, subsequently false-edits the footage with the
criminal Jewish sleuth ("Searchlight") Gerald
Gable, adding Nazi marching songs and deceptive
crosscutting of shots, into an amateurish attack on
Mr Irving's integrity which is broadcast in 1993 on
the British television Channel Four, as well as in
France, the United States and around the
world. Schmid also
complains about Mr Irving's Auschwitz revelations
to the Munich political police, provides them with
the video, and swears affidavits for them as a
witness. On July 17, 1991 the Munich courts impose
in absentia a fine of DM 7,000 on Mr Irving for the
opinions he has stated. |
to
top of page October 27, 1990 Mr Irving starts a two-week
lecture tour of Canada. "All regions of B'nai Brith
Canada (BBC) and Canadian Jewish Congress will
closely monitor the tour," reports the Canadian
Jewish News, "and [B'nai Brith Canada] is
considering lobbying the venues at which Irving is
to speak to cancel their contracts with him."
Members of Parliament like Shirley Maheu and
Margaret Mitchell write to selected centres stating
untruthfully: "Irving had to abandon his assertion
that Anne Frank's diary was a fake after losing a
legal battle to Otto Frank, Anne's father" (there
was no such legal battle, and Mr Irving stands by
his original assertion); and "Irving testified on
behalf of Ernst Zündel who was found guilty of
promotion of hatred" (the Supreme Court found
Zündel innocent). Refusing to bow to this
pressure, which was often backed by (unfulfilled)
threats of violence, the prestigious Ottawa
Congress Centre and other halls allowed the
meetings to go ahead. Alex Cullen, director of the
Canadian Rights and Civil Liberties Federation,
issued a statement backing Irving's right to
speak.
July 17, 1991 The
Board of Deputies of
British Jews, the "government within a
government" of the U.K.'s Jewish community, writes
to the German Office for the Protection of the
Constitution, Germany's leftist, subversive and
grossly corrupt "FBI", to draw attention to the
"right-wing extremist activities" of Mr Irving. The
Office's vice president could have told these
phoney Englanders to mind their own business;
instead he grovels to Board chief Neville Nagler,
"You can rest assured that the Office is closely
following every such attempt in the Federal
Republic of Germany. The Office is doing what it
can to hinder such activities within the limits of
the law and to inform the public about the true
aims of political extremists." He adds that the
Federal Minister of the Interior has already
instructed frontier authorities in March 1990 to
turn back Mr Irving: "In practice," he adds, "this
is only incompletely |
to
top of page practicable, as the frontiers between the member
states of the European Community are largely wide
open."
August 1991 Mr
Irving is accepted by the Munich administrative
court as an expert witness in the case appeal by
Lieutenant-Commander Ortwin Pohl, a German officer
accused of expressing politically incorrect
historical views at a private cocktail party at his
home in Washington, D.C. The court asks Mr Irving
to submit an opinion on the disputed matters of
history raised.
September 4, 1991
Professor Helmuth Auerbach, Jewish-expert of the
Institute of Contemporary History - where Mr Irving
has placed one-half of his Third Reich research
archives - writes a letter to the Munich public
prosecutor which shows that they are in close
collusion. Auerbach is appearing for the
prosecution in the case of Lieut.-Commander Pohl.
Under pressure from the Jewish-expert, the judge
writes Mr Irving that he can not guarantee his
safety from police prosecution if he delivers his
opinion at the hearing in person, and invites him
to submit it by mail. (Pohl's appeal is denied: he
is reduced to the ranks, discharged from the navy,
loses his pension, fined, and ordered to pay
costs).
September 17, 1991
Ian J. Kagedan, "National Director of Community
Relations" (we kid you not) of the B'nai Brith
Canada, writes privately to managers of every hall
booked for Mr Irving's forthcoming cross-Canada
lecture tour, urging them to violate the contracts,
defaming him ("neo-Nazi skinheads often serve as
bodyguards at his lectures") and promising aid if
the managers come into line: "Our own legal experts
are available should you require advice on how to
cancel."
October 1991 During
a further speaking tour across Canada, several
halls cancel contracts at the last minute. One of
them reveals a letter from Canadian Jewish
organisations which offers financial inducements to
breach the rental agreement, and guarantees to
indemnify the hall owners against any legal costs
and damages incurred.
October 18, 1991 Mr
Irving tours Argentina, lecturing to Spanish- and
German-language audiences. Buenos Aires newspaper
La Nación reports that DAIA (The Argentina
Delegation of Israeli Associations) announces that
David Irving, denounced by DAIA as an "agitador
internacional" who "publicly vindicates the
sinister Nazi regime, denies the Holocaust, and
incites race hatred" is in Argentina.Under hostile
pressure all remaining lecture hall contracts,
newspaper interviews, and television programmes are
cancelled. But an Argentine citizen donates to Mr
Irving two packages containing the original 500 pp.
memoirs of Adolf Eichmann. |
to
top of page November 15, 1991 At Mr Irving's invitation,
U.S. execution-technology consultant Fred Leuchter
arrives to speak at Chelsea Town Hall. He has
legally entered Britain at Dover. But Jewish groups
have spent weeks pressuring Kenneth Baker, the Home
Secretary, Britain's interior minister, into
denying Leuchter entry to Britain. Policemen storm
onto the stage, arrest Leuchter in mid-speech,
confine him to a prison cell, and deport him
overnight to Boston, Massachusetts.
November 1991
Speaking in Halle, an ugly industrial city in the
former Soviet Zone of Germany, at a mass meeting
covered by camera teams from the BBC (commentator:
Martin Bell), ITN, French, and German television
and every major American television chain, Mr
Irving says: I welcome this
opportunity to speak as an Englishman to the German
youth on this historic day, November the Ninth -
the day of the reunification of Germany. But the
process of reunification is anything but over yet.
There used to be a German-German-German question.
There is still a German-German question. There are
still German communities, German territories, that
are part of the German Reich - not only here in
Germany, not only here in Europe, but also
scattered around the whole world. I come to you
bearing greetings from the German community in
Canada where I spoke last week. He continues: "I am
now getting old. I am nearly at the end of my
writing career. But you are still young. You are
the representatives of Germany's future. Nobody can
accuse you of crimes against humanity." (Filming
the cheering German audience, British television
translates only the last sentence in sub-titles - a
deliberate distortion.) As Mr Irving begins
to speak of Rudolf Hess, the man of peace whom the
Allies kept caged in Spandau prison for forty-eight
years before his murder in solitary confinement in
1987, provocateurs planted in the front ranks of
the crowd begin to give the Hitler salute and shout
Sieg Heil. Mr Irving angrily interrupts his speech
to denounce them, repeating: "You are the
representatives of Germany's future. Do not come
here with those discredited salutes and |
to
top of page slogans of the past!" (These words too are
edited out of the television news
bulletins.)
November 1991 Mr
Irving's publishing company Focal Point launches
the standard edition of his Hitler's War with many
black-and-white and colour illustrations. At a
cocktail party in Mr Irving's home in the book's
honour, British defence minister Alan Clark - a
fellow-historian - is spotted by journalists, and
forced to resign under Jewish pressure a few days
later.
JEWISH ORGANISATIONS mount determined pressure
on bookshops and bookstore chains not to handle the
Focal Point edition of Hitler's War. Adam Smallman
of Southsea organizes a campaign against all the
W.H. Smith bookstores along the South Coast; the
branch in Worthing cancels a book-signing, and W.H.
Smith's head office orders Focal Point to cease
supplying their branches direct. Focal Point is
told of individual Jews - wearing their insignia -
sighted entering branches of Waterstone's bookstore
chain in Hampstead and elsewhere, taking the book
off the shelves and burying it in lower shelves
with its spine toward the wall. The Portsmouth
Times reported that bookshops there had been
pressured to "destroy" copies of the book. The
Hendon Times reported that Finchley Progressive
Synagogue had written to Margaret Thatcher, their
Member of Parliament, demanding Mr Irving's
prosecution for stating that statistics of
Holocaust victims had been exaggerated. January 9, 1992 The
manager of the big W.H. Smith bookstore in
Worthing, Sussex, is forced to cancel a
book-signing to which he has invited Mr Irving
after his Area Manager refers the matter to Head
Office. That week sees the re-launch with Peter
Hain, the South African terrorist-apologist, of the
Jewish front organisation, the "Anti-Nazi League";
the ANL is denounced by Black groups in Britain as
a front for the Socialist Workers' Party, a
born-again communist outfit. Their first activity
is to send a deputation to urge prime minister John
Major to dismiss defence minister Alan Clark for
attending Mr Irving's cocktail party; he complies,
and Clark resigns soon after.
January 1992 Mr
Irving wrote in the Liverpool Daily Post: "As the
Poles themselves now admit, the 'gas chambers' on
display at Auschwitz were built after the war for
tourists to look at." The Palm Beach Jewish World
of January 31 quoted a Polish embassy spokesman in
London as branding that statement "absolute
nonsense". The London Jewish Chronicle put it
slightly differently: a Polish embassy official had
checked with government, political, and academic
sources in Poland and "virtually" all of them said
they had never heard "such an absurd opinion." (The
Auschwitz state archives however subsequently
admitted that what they show the tourists is indeed
what they call a "postwar reconstruction". See box
on this page).
|
to
top of page January 16, 1992 London's Jewish Chronicle
reports that in an interview Mr Irving said: "The
Jews are very foolish not to abandon the gas
chamber story while they still have time." He adds:
"In ten years Israel will cease to exist and the
Jews will have to return to Europe."
January 28, 1992
Lawyer Harry Wruck for Canadian minister of state
Gerry Weiner, who has libelled Mr Irving in a
circular on government stationery issued on October
26, 1990 to news agencies in British Columbia and
throughout Canada as the latest lecture tour
begins, successfully pleads in the courts of
British Columbia for the libel case to be switched
to the Ontario courts, his home ground; not without
reason, he has more confidence in the judges there.
Weiner is fighting with taxpayer money. Mr Irving,
financing the litigation himself, has to abandon
the action.
January -- March
1992 Mr Irving tours South Africa again, speaking
in a score of cities. This, his most successful and
peaceful tour of the country yet, is followed by a
letter from the South African government informing
Mr Irving that although a British citizen does not
require a visa, they will make an exception in his
case. The South African press finds that the South
African Jewish Board of Deputies (SAJBOD) has
appealed to Pretoria to ban future visits by Mr
Irving; even the African National Congress (ANC) is
incensed by this, and spokesman Carl Niehaus says
that Mr Irving should not be banned.
February 20,
1992 During Mr Irving's South Africa tour, he
is scheduled to appear on Johannesburg's popular
Radio 702; he is informed ten minutes before the
programme that under Jewish pressure they have had
to cancel it. The previous evening he lectures to
an overflowing hall in the university of Pretoria;
his meeting in the War Museum hall in Johannesburg
on the 20th is cancelled by the management at short
notice, and the replacement hall at Sturrock Park
is cancelled two hours before the meeting begins,
explanation being that the S.A. Union of Jewish
Students had threatened to "disrupt the event." The
South African Jewish Board of Deputies (SAJBOD)
again claims the credit for silencing the
debate. |
to
top of page March 1992 Unidentified
terrorists bomb the Israeli embassy in Buenos Aires
killing 29. Intelligence sources say that the
explosion has come from within the embassy, but
President Carlos Menem drops a gratuitous hint that
"the presence of a British revisionist historian" a
few weeks earlier in Buenos Aires has a link with
the outrage. (In July 1994 a mystery explosion
destroys the Jewish community centre and
headquarters of DAIA in Buenos Aires killing up to
one hundred people.) Jewish organisations in Buenos
Aires use the terrorist bombing of the Israeli
embassy in an unsuccessful attempt to persuade his
Argentine publishers to cancel contracts!
May 5, 1992
Mr Irving appeals in Munich against his
conviction on the "fake gas chamber" charge. Judge
Thomas Stelzner, 30, allows an unprecedented Jewish
demonstration inside the court building.
Photographs of Mr Irving being bullied and harassed
are distributed around the world. The court refuses
his request to allow as defence witnesses Dr
Franciszek Piper, Polish director of the Auschwitz
state archives, and other experts who agree that
the gas chamber shown to tourists is a fake or
"reconstruction". Every
defence document is also disallowed. With Mr
Irving's approval, his eminent lawyers Hajo
Herrmann [wartime
photo, left] and Klaus Goebel
walk out of the courtroom in disgust. Speaking in
German, Mr Irving tells the judge, according to the
London Daily Telegraph: "We both have our duties.
My duty as an historian is to establish the truth.
Your duty is also to establish the truth - but you
have a problem in Germany."
Mr Irving tells the
judge and woman prosecutor in his closing
speech: I
am nearly at the end of my career as an
historian. Quite simply, I am running out of
words. But you both, judge and prosecutor, are
still young: you are on the threshold of your
careers, and it is clear to me that you've got
no alternative but to stick to the Federal
German version of the truth. Citing Mr
Irving's "obstinacy" in justification, Judge
Thomas Stelzner increases the fine to
DM10,000 at the suggestion of public prosecutor
Kaps. Stelzner ignorantly cites in his judgment the
Wannsee Conference of January 1942 (in which
however there is not the slightest reference to gas
chambers, Auschwitz, killings, or financial
compensation). Without Mr
Irving's knowledge, underground versions of his
closing speech in court--a privileged document in
every other country of the free world--are printed
and circulated around the world. A German
schoolteacher is dismissed, stripped of his
pension, and sent to prison for circulating copies.
A north German publisher who issues 40,000 copies
of the speech to his mailing list has his offices
raided by police, who seize the printing
plates.
May 8-26, 1992
Crudely addressed envelopes sent to British
national newspapers contain photocopies of letters
and a fake press clipping accusing Mr Irving of
having been arrested for homosexual offences by
Canadian police during his 1986 tour. The press
exposes both the letters and the clipping as clumsy
forgeries.
May 11, 1992
Bernard Levin, ageing columnist of The Times,
publishes yet another hate-filled, half-page attack
on Mr Irving. This time the newspaper allows a
truncated reply. "He [Levin] devoutly
wishes that I would go to Austria," writes Mr
Irving, "and be thrown in jail for life for my (to
him) inconvenient views. I was in Austria,
researching, on Sunday [May 10] despite an
arrest warrant issued in 1989 for expressing
precisely the same opinion", i.e., that the
Auschwitz gas chambers never existed. Following this
letter and newspaper reports (e.g. The Times diary,
May 12) that Mr Irving has just visited Austria (to
interview Lida Baarova, 80, the film actress, for
his Goebbels biography), the Board
of Deputies of British Jews writes indignantly
to the Austrian ambassador in London to ask why the
warrant for Mr Irving's arrest has not been
enforced. Instead of inviting
the Board to cease interfering in his country's
internal affairs, the Austrian ambassador promises
on June 11 to look into the matter, and writes on
June 22 that according to the Ministry of the
Interior "the warrant for Mr Irving's arrest issued
on 8th November 1989 by the Criminal Court Vienna
continues to be valid." Since the issue of that
warrant, he adds soothingly, Mr Irving has not been
in Austria. (He has.) This secret correspondence
makes plain who is the moving force behind the
persecution of Mr Irving in Austria and
Germany. |
to
top of page THE INTERNATIONAL hue and cry against David
Irving is in full swing. After a very successful
lecture tour across South Africa in the first
months of 1992, Pretoria notifies him in April that
it has withdrawn from him the visa exemption
enjoyed by every other British citizen. He has broken no
laws. The local Jewish
lobby claims the credit. On June 5, 1992 the
country's Cape Times reports that a Home
Affairs spokesman has refused to give reasons why
Mr Irving, who has visited the country four times,
has lost the visa exemption. The newspaper
clipping is triumphantly faxed by Ian Sachs of Cape
Town to Seymour Kopelowitz, national director of
SAJBOD -- the South African Jewish Board of
Deputies. That same day Kopelowitz privately rushes
it to Michael Whine, director of the Board of
Deputies of British Jews, in London, who is
coordinating the worldwide vendetta. Kopelowitz
comments to Whine: "I thought that I would bring to
your attention the fact that David Irving is now
persona non grata. Enclosed is a press cutting
which appeared in this morning's
newspaper."
June 9, 10,
1992 Newspapers in Newcastle-upon-Tyne,
Nottingham, and other British cities report that in
an orchestrated campaign bricks are being tossed
through the windows of branches of the bookstore
chain Waterstones and Dillons to force them to take
books by David Irving off display. Local Jewish
groups coordinated by the Board of Deputies claim
the credit, as the bookstore chains remove the
books temporarily from their shelves "in the
interests of security." "It should have been
withdrawn," huffs Gordon Leigh, president of the
representative Council of North-East Jewry to a
Newcastle newspaper, referring to the book -
Hitler's War - which has attracted the brickbats.
Mr Irving writes to Tim Waterstone and the CEO of
Dillons' guaranteeing to indemnify the costs of any
uninsured damage. The campaign subsides, without
even one reference in the national press.
June 13,
1992 Returning from Moscow, where he has
researched in the Soviet secret state archives, Mr
Irving flies from Munich to Rome to address
university students. His Lufthansa plane is
surrounded by police cars, and he is put on the
next flight back to Munich. Italian newspapers
state that the unprecedented operation has been
requested by local Jewish organisations.
June 15, 1992 The
Springer-group newspaper Die Welt, which as
recently as 1987 asked Mr Irving to write its
whole-page obituary of Deputy Führer Rudolf
Hess, and in July 1992 commissions a major article
from him on the Goebbels Diaries, publishes a
photograph of marching skinheads
captioned: "Over 50 skinheads stage a White Pride
March with Ku Klux Klan members through the US
city of Birmingham. On the same day the
right-wing radical author David Irving is
refused entry to Italy as 'non grata.' He wanted
to visit the neo-Nazi group Movimento Politico." |
to
top of page Mr Irving has in fact never heard of Movimento
Politico.
June 16,
1992 Mr Irving's old friend and television
sparring-partner (The David Frost Show, June 1977),
the Breslau-born former professor of history at
Sussex University popularly known by his English
name of Gerald Fleming, sends the Die Welt
clipping with a handwritten letter marked
"personal" to Mike Whine, director of the Board of
Deputies of British Jews:
Dear Mike, In future, it will be very
much easier to point out to the German
authorities how v. odd it is that they cannot
keep Irving out of Germany, when the Italian
Govt. had no difficulty in preventing him from
entering Italy! If in fact he tries entering
Germany again, and if, on such an occasion, the
order of the 9 March 1990 is again blatantly
flouted. Best, Gerald. June 28,
1992 Leaving his Mayfair flat this Sunday
morning at 6:45 a.m. to return to Moscow, Mr Irving
finds every lamppost, parking meter, and bollard
within hundreds of yards plastered with stickers
proclaiming David Irving Speaks and Rostock Burns,
and advertising rallies to be held at his front
door on July 3 and 4. On the back seat of a red
Ford Fiesta parked nearby he sees boxes of stickers
and cans of spray paint. A forty-something man
wearing a Jewish yarmulke shortly scurries round
the corner back to the car with an empty box under
his arm and drives off. Mr Irving passes details of
the car's licence tag to the police.
July 3 -- 4,
1992 Two days of unprecedented and violent
demonstrations by Blacks, Jews (carrying posters
reading GAS IRVING), Homosexuals, Lesbians and
underworld scum outside Mr Irving's central London
home are organised by Jewish organisations
masquerading as "the Campaign against Fascism in
Europe" (Cafe). Under one Steve Myers, Cafe sets up
a "Committee to Stop Irving," and plasters London
with posters calling for a "mass militant
demonstration" against him. The Sunday
Express later reveals Cafe as being a front of
the Mossad, the Israeli terror and intelligence
network. A typical letter
from a Sheffield bookshop to Focal Point
reads:
"Following complaints from valued
customers we no longer feel able to stock this
title" Throughout the summer Jewish newspapers
report a series of bookshops in Glasgow and
other cities "withdrawing" copies of HITLER'S WAR. (In fact none of them returns
copies).
July 10, 1992 They
try another privileged smear. Egged on by the
Jewish lobby, faded film actress Glenda Jackson,
now a Labour member of Parliament, asks in
Parliament what consideration the Director of
Public Prosecutions has given to "prosecuting David
Irving under the Race Relations Act 1976 over the
organisation of revisionist seminars describing
the |
to
top of page holocaust as a liberal myth." ( The official
parliamentary record uses the small H.) The
Attorney General replies: "The Director of Public
Prosecutions" -- a gentleman whose English name is
Alan Green and who is later obliged to resign after
being arrested for kerb-crawling -- "is not
currently giving consideration to any proceedings
against David Irving. Anyone who has evidence
giving reasonable grounds to believe that an
offence has been committed should report it to the
police." Strike one, as they say in
baseball.
July 1992
When the London Sunday Times admits that it has
signed an £85,000 contract with Mr Irving for
the historic missing fragments of the diaries of Dr
Joseph Goebbels, Nazi propaganda minister, which he
has brought back from Moscow, the international
community goes berserk, protesting that the
newspaper is giving Mr Irving both funds and
prestige and demanding that it think again (if it
does not want a negative outcome in its current New
York banking negotiations). The president and
vice-president of the American Jewish Committee
write letters to the editor insisting that he break
the contract. So do Jewish leaders in Britain.
Pandering to these international tortfeasors, the
British editor Andrew Neil publishes an immediate,
heart-rending two-page spread on Holocaust
revisionism, and promises to distribute it free to
every British schoolchild. Under further
pressure from the "Anti-Racist Alliance Poale Zion"
(a Jewish front agency) and the Jewish Socialist
Group, on July 16 the Sunday Times violates
its contract with Mr Irving to pay him for the
missing diaries which they have published in
sensational extracts for three weeks. Engaging one
of London's toughest law firms Mr Irving commences
High Court action for breach of contract and
claiming damages for Neil's infamous behaviour.
After nearly two years the legal costs already top
£200,000, but Neil has told lawyers it is his
intention to bankrupt Mr Irving. (In June 1994
Editor Neil leaves for a position in New York, his
spiritual homeland.) The case is set down to be
heard in October 1995. The fight
continues.
July 12,
1992 After days of living under police
protection after death threats and organised riots
outside his Mayfair, London, address -- West End
Central police officers have at their own request
photographed his entire apartment in case they have
to rescue him, and the steel barricades around it
are still up -- Mr Irving attends a local
restaurant, Richoux, in South Audley Street,
London, for Sunday lunch at the regular time.
Somebody has evidently tipped off the traditional
enemy, because three thugs ambush him in the
restaurant, savagely beat him, and try to lure him
into the street (where a mob, some equipped with
mobile phones, gathers within minutes). Since
Richoux's staff do nothing to call the police Mr
Irving's companion does, just in time. The police
find an Anglia Television news team waiting just
around the corner -- complete with a fake police
car. Mr Irving demands prosecutions for criminal
conspiracy, but London's overburdened police drop
the investigation. Mr Irving returns to Richoux
later that week to apologize for the disturbance.
One waitress states that she recognized one
attacker but has been instructed to tell the police
nothing. The manageress adds that the restaurant's
owner, a Mr Michael da Costa, has requested that Mr
Irving not return |
to
top of page July 14, 1992 Unknown people circulate to
Members of Parliament, using Mr Irving's address,
and to newspapers, using the fax number of Focal
Point, his publishing house, a professionally
produced, viciously anti-Semitic leaflet headlined
Jews -- people of the book -- or of the
cosh? There is uproar. Mr Irving proves that
his fax machine was not the source. The Director of
Public Prosecutions Barbara Mills makes inquiries
and confirms that the hate-filled leaflet is a
clumsy forgery designed, according to left-wing
weekly Time Out, to blacken Mr Irving's
name. She orders the police to "make enquiries with
a view to identifying the publishers or
distributors." Whatever they find out, the affair
is discreetly dropped and Mr Irving is never told
the result.
September 19,
1992 Mr Irving speaks
to the Clarendon Club, his private dinner
society, in London. Topic: The British
Press. That morning the
scum of London are out in force manning the
barricades outside his apartment again. In his
speech he says: Occasionally,
when I speak in Germany like in Munich last
weekend, last Saturday, somebody in the audience
says, "Mr Irving, why do you stand up for
Germany so much?" And I answer: "I don't stand
up for Germany. I stand up for the truth as an
historian."
[Applause]I ask myself
sometimes, Where do our journalists come from?
And I'm reminded that many years ago I had a
friend who worked in Harrods, in the perfumery,
a beautiful girl, and we were very good friends
for many years. And she told me that when her
friends in the pharmacy at Harrods got bored
they used to take condoms and stick needles
through them. I think this is
the answer to where those journalists have come
from. September 21, 1992 Under pressure from an
unnamed Jewish parent, Brentwood, the British
public school (est. 1496) which educated Mr Irving
and which has repeatedly honoured him by
invitations to address its alumniæ, cancels
its latest invitation at the last minute. "To
interfere in the academic life of the school
through the medium of outside pressure," regrets
the school Chronicle in an editorial, "is a
disturbing development." A Mr Peter Calver, who
started at Brentwood five years after Mr Irving
left, admits in a subsequent letter to the
Chronicle that he had asked the Old
Brentwood's Society to expel Mr Irving because of
his Munich "conviction"; alas, Mr Irving was not a
member -- an oversight he has rectified by now
applying to join.The history teacher who regularly
invites Mr Irving writes to him in July 1994 that
he hopes further visits will be possible "before
many more years" but that before then he expects
problems from "left-wing parents" who still have
children at the school. [Nearly four more years
pass before the school dares to invite him
again.] |
to
top of page September 1992 A painful interlude.
Bothered by a painful broken tooth, Mr Irving makes
an appointment with his dentist. Martyn Green, of
Knightsbridge Court, London, has been his dentist
for twenty years. The day before the due date, the
surgery phones -- Green has struck Mr Irving off
his list of patients, without offering a reason. Mr
Irving lodges a complaint with the dentists'
professional body.
AN ILLITERATE document dated October 9, 1992
purporting to be an official U.S. Government
(Office of Special Investigations) field report is
circulated, allegedly quoting German "F.B.I."
(Bundeskriminalamt) files blackening Mr
Irving's name. It displays surprising knowledge of
Mr Irving's movements and many of its false
allegations later surface in Jewish libels against
him, like the publications listed as: "David Irving
1989 Der Holocaust fand nicht statt.
Weltjudentum gerät in Panik! (The
Holocaust did not take place. World Judaism in
Panic!), [and] a planned three volume work
titled Adolf Hitler und die Judenfrage
(Adolf Hitler and the Jewish Question)." A
report in Der Spiegel confirms that the
cryptic U.S. telegraphic addresses which this "OSI"
telegram uses including B'nai Brith in London
(rhdlcne) are genuine. Mr Irving protests to the
U.S. embassy in London, and their Legal
Attaché James W Greenleaf advises him on
April 23, 1993 that the document is fake: "This material has been carefully
reviewed and it does not appear to be an
official U.S. Government document. We have
instituted inquiries which will resolve the
authenticity beyond a question of doubt. When
the enquiry is complete, I will advise you of
the outcome." (In June 1994 the embassy confirms to Mr Irving
that the document is a forgery.)
October 6,
1992 Daniel Levitas, ex-communist agitator and
boss of the Center for Democratic Renewal, in
Atlanta, tells the American press that "hundreds of
human rights activists" are due to protest at the
speech at the Smyrna community centre, outside
Atlanta, on October 16, by Mr Irving "who has
recently been denied entry into Canada." Banned? Does the
Simon
Wiesenthal Centre know something that Mr Irving
does not? He is about to embark on a seventeen-day
lecture tour across Canada.
October 9,
1992 The Canadian government sends a letter to
David Irving warning him that he appears to be
inadmissible to Canada because of the German
conviction, and the likelihood that he will commit
offences in Canada. The letter is handed to Mr
Irving by a courier in Los Angeles several days
later. Legal experts tell him that neither ground
will stand up in court. On October 16, Toronto
newspaper The Globe & Mail publishes an
admission
by the "Simon Wiesenthal Centre for Holocaust
Studies" that they have asked that Irving be
banned. |
to
top of page Douglas
Christie, famed Canadian defender of human rights,
announces legal action in Vancouver against the
proposed ban. Frank Dimant, vice president of B'nai
Brith Canada, and Bernie Farber, of the Canadian
Jewish Congress, state that they will seek
intervenor status if Christie fights the
immigration department in court. "This is another
bullet in the body of neo-Nazis," says Farber,
using gangland language. But Canada has
second, and then third, thoughts. Gerry Maffre of
Canada's immigration department replies
to the Wiesenthal Centre that while the RCMP will
keep a watch on Mr Irving, "he won't necessarily be
stopped at the border." Maffre tells the
Vancouver Sun that Mr Irving "can't be
arbitrarily banned from entry", but will get a
hearing before an immigration adjudicator. The
Jewish community is furious. "I'm far from
satisfied," states Sol Littman, Canadian director
of the Wiesenthal Centre on October 26. "I think
they're taking a very, very weak position." Royal
Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) commissioner Norman
Inkster writes to the Jewish body that Mr Irving's
proposed visit does not constitute a crime unless
he surreptitiously enters the country; they will
however take action if Mr Irving breaks the
Canadian hate law or any other law while in the
country." From Douglas, B.C., where immigration
officers have been keeping a border watch for Mr
Irving for several days, they fax the newspaper
report, which is entitled HOLOCAUST DENIER TO BE
ALLOWED VISIT, to headquarters for comment: an
anonymous hand inks the word "No" next to the
headline.
October 24,
1992 In South Africa the vendetta escalates.
Kate Everingham, Jewish sales |
to
top of page director of Media House Publications in
Johannesburg, who has asked for sole rights to sell
Mr Irving's book Hitler's War in South
Africa, unilaterally cancels the
agreement: "I don't want any copies on our
premises," she writes in a panicky note. "We
have had some incidents already." "Many of our book buyers are Jewish," she
explains to Focal Point on October 31. "It is much
easier for [my staff] now to say, 'We don't
stock the book.'"Similar direct pressure continues
on individual bookshops all over Britain.
October 28,
1992 In Germany too the dirty tricks multiply.
Untrue rumours are circulated among bookshops in
Germany that some of Mr Irving's book titles have
been placed on the Index -- the German government's
censorship list of works which may not be publicly
sold. (Not one publication by Mr Irving has ever
been censored, anywhere in the world.) Experts on Canadian
immigration law meanwhile consulted by Mr Irving
point out that to justify a ban, a foreign
"conviction" has to have an exact equivalent in
Canadian law; the German one does not -- in no
other country is there a law against "defaming the
dead"; and since he has spoken in Canada a hundred
times before without breaking the law, the second
pretext for an entry ban will not hold water
either. Christie lodges his
appeal in Vancouver. Erwin Nest, executive director
of the Pacific Region of the Canadian Jewish
Congress, warns in an affidavit sworn on October 26
of the consequences of allowing Mr Irving in,
stating, according to the Vancouver Sun on
October 28, 1992: "I believe that should David Irving be
allowed to travel throughout Canada, personally
disseminating his views denying the historical
fact of the Holocaust with the attendant
publicity arising thereby, this would cause both
personal trauma to Holocaust survivors and their
families, as well as to other survivors of Nazi
concentration camps, and likely cause a
noticeable increase in the manifestation of
anti-Semitic incidents in Canada." Nest backs his affidavit with a letter from one
Robert Krell, professor of psychiatry at the
University of British Columbia, who has written to
Nest on October 23, 1992: Krell's credentials are
above reproach though not his impartiality - he was
himself hidden as a Jewish child in Holland for
three years during the war. Yet another survivor.
"In my experience," he testifies, survivors
who are patients and those who are not, suffer
daily from the consequences of their war time
experiences. Any reminder -- a barking dog, a
car backfiring resembling a shot, the sound of
sirens -- all cause flashbacks to the time of
their suffering. Thus, for most, articles in the
newspaper, as well as television news, cause
great distress when people write or appear
denying them their past experiences. Krell claims to
have seen relatively well-functioning survivors
"decompensate" into depression at news of the
premature release of war criminals and upon
discovery of articles and books querying the
Holocaust. "Canadian Jews," concludes Krell,
"should not have to live in fear of the presence of
a David Irving." |
to
top of page Krell's
affidavit is before the court, at Vancouver on
Tuesday, October 27, which hears Douglas Christie's
application for an injunction against immigration
stopping Mr Irving's entry. The judge denies
Christie's application. On the other side
of the country, Mr Irving legally enters Canada,
flies to Vancouver and drives to Victoria, British
Columbia. Somehow
-- probably by illegal wiretaps -- the traditional
enemy learns that he is in the country. Moving
fast, Jack R Avery, of Canada Immigration's
investigations unit in Vancouver city, requests
material from Toronto, from Harold Musetescu -- the
pony-tailed, ear-ringed, hippie-garbed, mixed-race
officer of the Immigration Investigation Service
[based at 1280 Finch Avenue W., 2nd floor,
Downsview, Ont. M3J 3KG]. Musetescu, who has an
obsession about white supremacy, is masterminding
the whole operation against Mr Irving in collusion
with the Canadian Jewish bodies. In the Niagara
Falls hearings two weeks later he is observed in
close cahoots with Marvin Kurz, a lawyer for the
B'nai Brith Canada; Mr Irving protests during that
hearing about Kurz's interference with witnesses,
which does not prevent Musetescu from perjuring
himself in the witness stand. Answering Avery's
plea Musetescu notifies Vancouver by computer
link:
Assistance has been sought from RCMP LO
[Liaison Office] Bonn to obtain
documents, convictions, etc. He states
boldly: "Subject is holocaust denier." The quality
of Musetescu's further information can be seen from
Avery's resulting request to the Minister, Bernard
Valcourt, an ex-criminal (dangerous driving under
the influence) to permit the issue of an arrest
warrant against Mr Irving, who has not in fact
written one book about the Holocaust: The
subject is the author of several books that deny
the existence of the holocaust. Information
received from various sources leads me to
believe that the subject may be in Canada to
speak at meetings. Canada has
evidently wiretapped Mr Irving's guarded telephone
conversations with Douglas Christie, his lawyer,
and with the organizer of his forthcoming meetings
in British Columbia. More lies follow:
"The purpose of these meetings," wrote Avery, "is
to deny the holocaust and incite hatred." |
to
top of page Information
received indicates that the subject is aware
that he is being sought after by Immigration. He
is therefore conducting his nefarious activities
and movements in a secretive way for the express
purpose of eluding Immigration authorities.
Because the purpose of the subjects
[sic] visit is to incite hatred against
specific groups, it could be argued that he is a
danger to the public. The white supremists
[sic], neo-Nazi, skin-head elements that
follow the philosophy of Mr Irving are known to
engage in acts of random violence against
specifically targeted groups. In Victoria
that evening October 28 Mr Irving is awarded
the George Orwell Freedom of Speech prize ("For his
courageous defence of Freedom of Speech in
historical inquiry"). The restaurant is surrounded
by RCMP police. He is dragged away in handcuffs by
half a dozen Royal Canadian Mounted police officer
ten minutes after concluding his speech of
thanks. Because sixty to
seventy ordinary Canadians have staged a noisy
protest outside the Victoria city jail where Irving
is held overnight, the authorities decide to
provide secure handling from airport to airport and
he is transferred to Vancouver city on October 29,
after a spell in prison garb at the island's main
convict jail, handcuffed to police
officers. That night
Musetescu forwards more material to Murray
Wilkinson, the government's case presenting
officer, whom the illiterate Musetescu spells as
"Likson", in time for the Vancouver hearing of
October 30. The Vancouver
Inquiry is held on October 30, 1992 on the fifth
floor of the Adjudication Directorate, 800 Helmcken
Street, Vancouver city. There is massive press and
television coverage. Documents faxed overnight by
SAJBOD about Mr Irving's alleged banning from South
Africa turn up in the hearing; so do documents from
Germany, Italy, and Britain. He is told he will be
held three weeks in jail pending a hearing while
the government prepares its case for excluding him.
The enemy have won: his tour is in ruins. He
accepts a voluntary departure notice, agreeing to
leave Canada by midnight on November 1: to his
enemy's rage, this gives time for one more big
meeting in Toronto. And, unlike a deportation, he
will be free to return. In Vancouver, as
the immigration hearing ends, there is a strange
interlude, which is later to prove highly
significant. A complete stranger, Brian Fisher,
offers to drive Mr Irving from the city back over
to Victoria to collect his belongings - a round
trip of eight hours or more. As they return on the
Tsawwassen ferry, Fisher asks Mr Irving if, in
return for having done this favour, the historian
will autograph fifty comic lithographs in his
possession, drawn and signed by Konrad Kujau, the
notorious forger of the Hitler Diaries: it was Mr
Irving who, in April 1983, exposed the diaries as a
hoax at the famous press conference of Hamburg news
magazine Der Stern which had paid nine million
marks over $6 million) for them. Too late, Mr Irving
learns that Fisher lives just over the US border,
in Washington state. On the drive to the
border, Mr Irving discusses his situation with
Fisher. Shall he get that departure form stamped
here and now? Fisher asks what it says, and Irving
takes it out of the folder. The envelope reads
only, Important, please hand this document into
Canadian authorities at the time of your departure
from Canada. Your departure will be verified by
return of this document to the issuing
office. It does not read
like a mandatory instruction; better therefore,
says Irving, to hand it in at Niagara Falls on
Sunday, the time and place he has announced he will
formally leave Canada. There is, to be fair, a
second uncertainty: what if Canada does not allow
him back in in two hours' time -- he will be
trapped on the wrong side of the border, with all
his properties stuck inside Canada? |
to
top of page The journey
however goes well: US border officials allow him to
pass with no difficulties -- and why shouldn't
they? He has a permanent entry visa.
At Fisher's home Mr
Irving signs the lithographs, and makes three
long-distance telephone calls by Pacific Bell. The
first is to the residence of Heinz K., his
Vancouver area organiser: he is concerned that the
evening is now drawing on, and he still has to
collect boxes of books that have been stored at the
K. household, now that the tour is effectively
over. There is no answer. At 10:18 p.m. Mr Irving
phones Paul Norris, his organiser in Toronto, with
instructions to cancel his planned speech in Ottawa
and concentrate everything on a major farewell
meeting in Toronto on Sunday evening (from memory,
he will later testify this call was around 11:15
p.m.) At 10:43 p.m. he then phones Vancouver again:
this time K.'s daughter answers, and he explains
he's going to be late. She arranges a rendezvous on
Route 99 for her to pilot them to their household
when he gets back over the border. The
Pacific-Bell company's billing records will later
confirm these times and calls from Fisher's
American home. At 11:20 p.m.
Fisher drives him back the short distance over
deserted roads to the United States. There is only
one lane open at the Canadian border post at
Douglas, British Columbia. The customs officer --
later identified as Sandy Basra -- hands back both
passports without question or comment; at Heinz K's
household in a Vancouver suburb they shake hands
and Fisher leaves immediately to return home,
crossing back into the United States a few minutes
after midnight. All of these
seemingly trivial details become of immense
importance a few days later. October 31,
1992 His plane leaves from Vancouver for
Toronto at 8 a.m. On the three thousand mile flight
to Ontario Mr Irving records the brief excursion to
the United States in the diary typed into his
electronic typewriter's memory. In Toronto that
Saturday October 31, he freely talks about the
excursion to reporters. The Canadian Press agency
reports:
TORONTO: David Irving claimed he
drove out of Canada after being ordered to leave
the country on Friday and drove back in with no
questions asks. "I showed my British passport
(to border officials) and there were no
problems", the writer said after an impromptu
news conference here. Newspapers
publish this dispatch on Sunday. It seems like no
big deal: Mr Irving is planning to leave Canada as
agreed that Sunday night anyway, at the Niagara
Falls in Ontario. In fact Canada has
been on weak ground from the first moment and knows
it. A few hours after the Departure Notice on
October 30, Murray Wilkinson, the government's case
presenting officer at Vancouver, secretly notifies
Joseph Rikhof, chief of legal services at national
headquarters in Ottawa:
Irving plans to return to Canada. If
after this experience someone wishes to alleged
[sic] Irving is inadmissible I think
more work is needed to prepare a case. |
to
top of page In a
confidential file note, Wilkinson also notes that
the allegations they have prepared against Mr
Irving [under the Immigration Act's sections
27(2)(g), 27(2)(a), 19(1)(19)(1) and 19(2)(a) of
the Act] were useless: Except for 27(2)(g), to
which Mr Irving concedes under duress, Wilkinson
notes: Case on
other allegations tenuous without better
evidence. Tenuous
indeed. Meanwhile the
newspaper photographs of a visiting British
historian, his handcuffed hands clasping an open
pen, shock Canada. The Globe & Mail
publishes an editorial in his defence -- and
regrets it: for four weeks it has to publish
columns of venomous letters from Canada's Jewish
community and dares not print one letter in its
own, or his, defence. November 1,
1992In Toronto on Sunday evening Mr Irving
delivers a
farewell speech to five hundred Canadians while
the newspaper and television reporters, denied
entry, mass in the foyer below. (The Primrose Hotel
has to publish a half-page advertisement in
Toronto's newspapers a few days later apologising
to the Jewish community for having inadvertently
allowed Mr Irving to speak.) Harold Musetescu
infiltrates the Primrose Hotel with another
immigration investigation officer, Kevin Tufford,
and they ask Wolfgang Droege -- a convicted
drug-dealer and arms runner, now a Canadian
government agent masquerading as a right-winger --
to fetch Mr Irving out for them. At first the
speaker refuses, as he is still lecturing. Later,
he visits Musetescu and Tufford in an empty banquet
hall. Musetescu is wearing khaki fatigue trousers,
a black T-shirt, a leather bomber-jacket; his
shoulder-length hair parted to reveal an ear-ring.
He does not look much like a Canadian government
official to the Englishman, and Musetescu has shown
him no kind of identity badge (under oath, he
perjures himself on November ·· and says
that he did); when Musetescu asks him if he has
left Canada and returned since the Vancouver
hearing, he sees no reason to reveal to him that he
has. If anything, by his
bearing and manner Musetescu looks and acts like
one of the more violent enemies of free
speech. With the security of the more elderly members of
his audience in mind, since he would not put it
beyond his enemies to stage a riot even now, an
hour later Mr Irving sends Paul Norris over to
challenge Musetescu, who has now invaded the
lecture hall, to show his identity. An hour later
still, leaving the hall in the same lift as
Musetescu and a female officer, Mr Irving himself
demands to see any kind of official identity badge.
The female produces an Ontario police badge, and
with a nod from her Musetescu - reluctantly - hauls
a badge out of his pocket and shows it. Fearing illegal
attempts to detain him, he manages to shake them
off as he leaves the hall. As he tries to
leave Canada at the Niagara Falls two hours before
the deadline, there is a barrage of telephone and
telex messages over the famous Rainbow bridge and
United States officials Randy Howe and Mitchell H
Pilon refuse to let him in. In thirty years Mr
Irving has never been denied entry to the United
States before. Has somebody tampered with their
computer? Sent back to the
Canadian end of the bridge, he is now allowed back
into Canada but only pursuant to para. 14(1)(c) of
the Immigration Act, he is handcuffed by
Musetescu's officials, re-arrested, imprisoned at
four a.m. and held for mandatory deportation at a
court hearing set for nine o'clock to be held at
the Immigration Adjudication section at No. 6278
Lundy's Lane in Niagara Falls. |
to
top of page At eight-fifty
however a worried senior immigration officer, Steve
McCaffrey, the prosecuting officer, visits the
historian in his holding cell: "We have heard
rumours," he says, "that you left Canadian soil for
two hours on Friday night. It means that you are
legally back in Canada. If this is true, it puts us
in a very difficult position." "It is," says Mr
Irving, suddenly realising the significance of that
fortuitous two hour U.S. trip to sign those
lithographs. "And you are. " November 4,
1992 Lou Martens, a stranger to Mr Irving who
happens to be in court during the hearing, offers
to stand bail for him. The authorities do not make
it easy for him. Martens is obliged to deposit
twenty thousand dollars in cash with Immigration
Canada as a bond to secure Mr Irving's release.
Irving is ordered to reside continuously at
Martens' home at nearby Thorold, and to return to
the court at ten a.m. two days later for the
renewed hearing. Douglas Christie
files . . . +++ November 13,
1992 After a two-week legal battle which has
been fought from one end of Canada to the other
under the glare of the television and printed
media, during which the Canadian immigration
minister, Bernard Valcourt, is so determined to
deport Irving that his officials like
Musetescu - perjure themselves in court
- fake computer print-outs, and
- blandly ignore the sworn depositions and
evidence of eight witnesses and documents that
Mr Irving provides to prove that he is legally
in Canada -- he has the prison director retrieve
the diary passage from his typewriter's memory,
and Brian Fisher even produces his Pacific Bell
billing records that prove Mr Irving made the
phone calls from his home in the United
States
the Niagara Falls immigration adjudicator
Kenneth Thompson, who has taken all night to
consult his conscience and no doubt other sources
of wisdom, rules that the side-trip to the U.S.A.
never happened. He orders Mr Irving deported
immediately to London.
November 13, 1992
Mr Irving is driven to the court in Niagara Falls
for the final hearing. He is satisfied that he has
established beyond doubt the truth -- that having
left the country briefly for Blaine, on the west
coast of the USA, that Friday evening, he has by
chance thwarted the efforts of those who procured
that fateful halting on the bridge at Niagara
Falls. He is however prepared for all
eventualities. In his inner pocket he tucks one
copy of the writ, which he will slap on the
adjudicator the moment it is plain he is going to
order, against all the evidence, a deportation. He
gives another copy to his aide Paul Norris, and
says: "If I say the codeword Valkyrie, don't let
anyone stop you: jump up and slap this writ on the
case presenting officer McCaffery," -- representing
the minister. The press packs
into the press room and watches on closed circuit
television. Four pressmen are selected by ballot
for the four vacant seats. A single television
camera feeds the networks news channels. The usual
rented mob is building up outside with angry
placards and banners once again. As Mr Irving waits
in the foyer, giving a final interview to a
reporter, McCaffery asks to see him alone: "If the
adjudicator rules in your favour," he advises,
"what do you plan to do?" "Drive to Ottawa and hold
the meeting we have planned there, then drive back
to Washington." |
to
top of page McCaffery shakes
his head. "I recommend that you drive straight from
here to the border. Otherwise," he says earnestly,
"there is every indication that you will be
arrested all over again, this time on the two other
charges" -- namely the ones which his Vancouver
colleague Wilkinson has already guaranteed would
not be revived. "My name is Ken
Thomson," says the adjudicator, opening the
hearing, and begins to read out his findings. [Note that the
version of this document posted by Nizkor is
incomplete and inaccurately transcribed: Ken
McVay has omitted every one of Mr Irving's
objections and remarks. For the complete,
accurate transcript, see elsewhere on
this Website]. He agrees that the writer's assertion that he
left Canada briefly on October 30 is the most
significant evidence before him. "This purported
departure," he repeats, "is pivotal, since if it is
factually accurate it would mean that the action
taken against you by immigration officials in
Niagara Falls on November 1st, 1992 was based on
erroneous facts." It shortly becomes
plain that he is troubled by the minutiæ of
that trip to Blaine. You testified that
you left the mainland at 2:00 p.m. and upon your
arrival in Victoria you gathered your belongings
and consulted with your lawyer [Douglas
Christie]. You left Vancouver Island on the
8:00 p.m. ferry [Mr Irving has produced the
ticket as evidence] arriving on the mainland at
9:40 p.m. You drove directly down Route 99 to the
United States border at Blaine, Washington,
crossing between 10:15 and 10:30 p.m. Mr Fisher presented
both of your passports to a U.S. immigration
officer who, upon looking at your document, made a
comment concerning your name which felt was off
colour. No stamp was placed in your passport and
you were granted entry. You proceeded to
the Fishers' home in Ferndale, a community located
a short distance from Blaine. You arrived at Mr
Fisher's home shortly before 11:00 p.m. where you
were met by Helga Ashton, whom, you described as Mr
Fisher's lady friend [later his
wife]. She offered you a
beer and you watched the Canadian news on
television where you saw film coverage of yourself
outside the courthouse in Vancouver earlier in the
day, driving away with Mr Fisher in his
car.
Thomson then
relates the three phone calls that Mr Irving places
from Fisher's home to Canadians. He continues that
the allegation is that Mr Irving is lying (and of
course by implication those Pacific Bell billing
records and the other documents and the witnesses
who have testified under oath for him):
Immigration
authorities now contend that you did not at any
time in fact physically leave Canada until this
attempted entry to the United States at
Niagara.
He explains that he
has a great deal of difficulty in accepting Mr
Irving's explanation of why he did not hand in the
departure notice for stamping at the Blaine border
crossing. As he continues, it is increasingly
likely that he is about to order the writer's
deportation. He suggests that there are four
significant discrepancies in detail between
Irving's and Fisher's evidence, which suggests to
him, as he tells Mr Irving that "you in fact
remained in Canada throughout the period in
question." First, unlike Mr
Irving his driver Fisher did not recall showing
their passports either on entering the United
States or on leaving. (As it is not notoriously
easy to cross U.S. border posts without documents,
it seems unduly perverse to attach weight to
this).
quote: Secondly, Mr Fisher
testified that the two of you proceeded into Canada
and met a car on the side of the highway [K.'s
daughter] where Mr Fisher dropped you off and
then returned immediately to the United
States: IRVING
[interrupting]: No, that wasn't the
testimony! THOMSON: -- You
testified that you met Sandra K. as described by Mr
Fisher and that Mr Fisher and yourself followed her
to the K. residence a short distance. IRVING: That was
his testimony too. THOMSON: Okay.
There's no need for you to say anything
now. IRVING: Well, this
is serious ? ! THOMSON: Well, it
is very serious. IRVING: -- a
serious matter for me. THOMSON: -- but
you're not going to say anything now. You have had
your chance. Now it's my turn. IRVING: Well,
you're implying ? THOMSON:
Okay!? IRVING: -- that I
committed perjury! THOMSON: Well, that
will be, uh, that is for me to determine. So either
you be quiet or I'm going to have you evicted and
I'm going to put you back in the cell back there
and I'll give the decision for the rest of the
people here. Okay? So there's no need for you to
say another word. |
to
top of page The third
"discrepancy" which Thomson finds, as he
remorselessly grinds on, is that Fisher testified
he crossed back to the United States at midnight;
but the U.S. immigration service printout shows the
car entering the United States at 3:11 a.m., "some
three hours later than he testified to." (Weeks will pass
before the United States Immigration Service US-INS
reveals to Irving's lawyers what the Canadian
immigration officers have known all along, but keep
silent about: as Thomson should have known too, the
US-INS computer is standardised on Washington D.C.,
i.e. Eastern Standard Time, which is three hours
later than Canadian Pacific time. The print-out is
in fact final proof that Fisher, and hence Irving,
both told the truth: he crossed at eleven minutes
after midnight, not 3:11 a.m. local
time).
The fourth
contradiction is in fact the same as the first -
namely that Thomson believes that Fisher testified
that he dropped Mr Irving off on the highway near
Vancouver and returned to the United States around
midnight, while in his affidavit, from memory, he
"swore that he drove to the residence of Heinz K.
and departed at 12:45 a.m." Thus Fisher seems to
have contradicted himself. "This is
ridiculous," shouts Mr Irving, feeling that one
man's negligent reading of the evidence before him
is leading to him being railroaded out of Canada
with disastrous future consequences. But negligence is
now compounded with perversity, as Thomson refers
to the phone calls from the United States, for
which incontrovertible billing evidence has been
produced to him. THOMSON: Now, I am
at a loss as to how you could have telephoned Mr
Norris at 10:18 p.m. when you testified you did not
arrive at the Fisher residence until sometime
around 10:45 p.m. IRVING: My memory
was faulty, that's all. We now have the
[billing] records. As for Sandra K.'s
sworn testimony that yes, she did receive a call
from Mr IRVING saying that he was in the United
States, and it was about 10:45 p.m., well, says
THOMSON, she too must have been perjuring herself.
Mr K., her father, had testified under oath too,
says THOMSON, that Mr IRVING and Fisher arrived at
11:30 to 11:45 p.m. "This is, uh, also at odds with
Mr Fisher's testimony." IRVING: It is not.
It is not. This is what he, uh, precisely what he
said in the witness box!" THOMSON: I'm not
here to debate this with you. IRVING: The
journalists have heard it! THOMSON: Okay, you
have, uh. I'm not going to warn you again. One more
outburst and you're going to be removed from this
room." Mr Irving, aware
that he has the television cameras trained on him,
states: "I'm not going to be
rail-roaded!" The case presented
by the Canadian immigration officials Adjudicator
Thomson however finds to be persuasive,
particularly the computer print-out from the Blaine
border crossing: ("an incomplete report"
interrupts Mr Irving). "One has to be convinced,"
concludes Thomson, reaching the point of his
decision, "that your short trip to the United
States never happened." He makes no attempt to
explain the entry describing the trip which Mr
Irving typed into his electronic typewriter memory
- the machine was seized the moment he was
arrested. Referring to the ominous encounter with
the ear-ringed Musetescu in the Primrose Hotel,
Thomson says: "If you were so leery of Mr
Musetescu, why would you just simply not refuse to
answer any questions and walk away?" He continues:
"I have a great deal of difficulty accepting your
evidence. It did not have a ring of truth to it . .
. I could not help but get the impression that you
were at times simply reciting a rehearsed
script." He does not ask
himself how long Mr Irving could have had to
rehearse it: before midnight on the Bridge, he has
had no reason to suppose he would need one; at four
a.m. he is still having his property inventoried,
at nine a.m., after a literally sleepless night he
is in the witness box reconstructing from memory
the sequence of the border-crossing with Brian
Fisher. Thomson's voice drones on: "I found you to
be a difficult witness who was often
confrontational with the case presenting office
when asked straightforward questions. When viewed
as a whole this evidence can lead to only one
conclusion, that the event was a total fabrication
that never took place. I can only speculate that
you and your supporters concocted your story to
garner further publicity and prolong your stay in
Canada - both of which you have done with some
success." |
to
top of page It is evident
that Mr Thomson is not to be counted among Mr
Irving's supporters. He exclaims to the cameras:
"This is a travesty." "Consequently,"
concludes Thomson, putting away his papers, "you
are hereby ordered deported."
As Thompson
finishes reading his adjudication, reports The
Globe & Mail, Mr Irving jumps to his feet
and hands him a request for a judicial review of
the decision. "This is a time when the real courts
can take over," he says. "The kangaroo court has
had its say." [See too the Toronto Sun's
report]. [The case for judicial review is
lodged with the District Court on July 29,
1994]. Mr Irving stands
up and puts his Writ on Thomson's shoulder. "Mr
Thomson," he remarks courteously, "I'm afraid I
have to serve this writ in the Courts of Ontario on
you, which I ask you to take notice of --
" Thomson is
startled, snaps "Very well," and orders Mr Irving
to his seat. The latter continues: "I also have a
writ to serve on Mr McCaffery." The adjudicator
shouts: "Mr McCaffery, would you please summon the
guards in here." IRVING: "This is
the time now when the real courts can take over,
and the kangaroo courts have had their
say." McCaffery is
screaming for a guard to come, but the writer, as
he is handcuffed, announces: "I'm entitled to serve
a High Court writ on this Court and on the Crown's
representative, and this is precisely what I've
done." Thompson declares:
"You are hereby ordered retaken into custody
pending your removal from Canada."
He is deported in
handcuffs to London that night aboard an Air Canada
flight despite protests from the Canadian Writers'
Union, from the Canadian PEN, and from other
powerful groups. Valcourt telephones
instructions to Toronto airport's immigration
detention centre to notify him by phone immediately
the plane with Mr Irving aboard has left Canadian
soil.
November 9,
1992 In Europe meanwhile the battle has
continued behind the scenes. After the Board of
Deputies of British Jews protests to the German
embassy in London that Mr Irving is still entering
Germany, the embassy replies to Neville Nagler, the
Board's chief executive, with a cryptic admission
that at least one of Mr Irving's manuscripts has
been illegally obtained: I have forwarded
the manuscript of David Irving to the German
authorities. It is indeed regrettable that such an
irresponsible person still succeeds in entering
Germany despite an official interdiction. |
to
top of page Mr Irving's
letters to the German embassy asking them to
identify the manuscript which has obviously been
feloniously obtained by the Board of Deputies go
unanswered, and he asks SO1 Branch -- the Office of
International & Organised Crimeat Scotland Yard
to investigate.
November 23,
1992 One episode typical of many: Sky
Television invites Mr Irving to participate in a
news discussion programme. Later that day they
cancel the invitation because the Jews they have
approached have refused to debate with Mr Irving -
an easy means of silencing him under Britain's
television code of practice.
January 13,
1993 Mr Irving appeals to a higher court in
Munich on the "fake gas chamber" conviction. Just
before the hearing begins one of his three lawyers,
the Austrian Klaus Goebel, tells him he must
withdraw - he shows Mr Irving a letter he has
received from the local bar association threatening
disciplinary action for defending him. Mr Irving
demands that the court extend its protection to his
attorneys. DAVID
IRVING with his heroic attorney at the Munich
courthouse, January 13, 1993, wartime fighter
ace Hajo Herrmann (centre) and
Austrian Karl Schaller
In vain. Judge Huber also refuses, like his
craven predecessors, to allow any defence documents
or to hear any defence witnesses, including
Germar Rudolf, the Max-Planck institute's
expert on solid-state chemistry. Seldom has the
stock of German justice fallen so low this
century. The judge appears
to fall asleep during the hearing, makes several
telephone calls during adjournments, returns to
increase the fine yet again to DM 30,000 (over
$20,000).
"During a break in
proceedings," reports the Süddeutsche
Zeitung, "Irving repeated the 'Auschwitz-Lie'
in an interview with a private television station,
claiming that the Auschwitz gas chambers were a
fabrication. That could possibly lead to a further
round in the courts," added the liberal-left-wing
newspaper eagerly.
At a public meeting
in downtown Munich that evening Mr Irving calls the
judge a "senile, alcoholic cretin." Police agents
attending the meeting report this to the judge, who
tells the Süddeutsche Zeitung that he will sue
for criminal libel; as of this date no action has
been initiated. (Mr Irving indicates on the phone
to his German lawyers that he will call them and
others as witnesses in justification of his
remark). All of which may
explain why as early as January 20, 1993 the
Australian embassy in Bonn, trying to investigate
the DM 30,000 Munich fine on Irving, laments to
Canberra that "Bavarian Justice Ministry officials
have not been forthcoming" because they know the
whole case stinks.
January - March
1993 Mr Irving spends three months writing in
South Africa, after negotiating certain conditions,
which however prevent him from speaking in public
or to the media. While he is there
he receives a letter dated February 5, 1993 letter
from the Australian government refusing him
permission to enter Australia, where he has
peacefully lectured on two earlier tours. Thus a
new battle front has opened. |
to
top of page Many unknown
enemies have thrown their weight into silencing
him. Hearing that Mr Irving is planning a speaking
tour of Australia Sir Thomas Eichelbaum, a Prussian
Jew and chief justice of New Zealand, and Wendy
Ross, the head of the Jewish Defense league in
Auckland, both hot-footed it to Australia to add
their weight to gag him at all costs. Bruce
Phillips of Auckland, later reveals this in a
reader's letter to Time magazine on
April 18, 1996 (which they do not however
publish). The Australian
newspapers and television seize on the issue as one
involving freedom of speech; from South Africa and
later from England, Mr Irving speaks several times
by radio and television to Australian television
audiences. Australian and New Zealand newspapers
reveal that the brothers Isi and Mark Leibler,
millionaire presidents of the Australian Zionist
Federation and Australian Jewish Congress
respectively, are generous financial contributors
to the ruling Australian Labour Party. Mr Irving
lodges an appeal with the Federal Court. The
Australian press is wholly on his side. "We lost
the press war over Irving," admits the shocked
Australian Jewish News. The court-ordered release
of government files shows that the prime minister
Paul Keating himself took the decision to ban Mr
Irving.
April 20,
1993 Arriving in Washington D.C.'s
international airport, for a press conference on
the opening of the Holocaust museum on the Mall, Mr
Irving is held by immigration officials for three
hours. U.S. Immigration (INS) officials then
apologize to him that they have discovered that
somebody has rigged their computer database against
him, placing "a yard and a half of garbage" on his
file in an attempt to get him denied entry to the
United States. The file falsely claims, among other
things, that there is an arrest warrant outstanding
in Canada; but the Canadians' own database - each
country's immigration service can access the
other's computer database - shows this to be
untrue. The U.S. embassy in London writes him in
June confirming that the file has been
cleared. Mr Irving starts a
Freedom of Information suit in Washington to obtain
access to the file to identify who is the culprit,
not that there can be any real doubt. He also files
suit under Canada's Access to Information Act, to
enable him to commence civil proceedings against
the government officials concerned, backed now by
nearly a thousand supporters in North America. A
David Irving Fighting Fund rapidly attracts the
cash needed to fight the traditional enemy
worldwide and on his own terms.
April 27,
1993 The French courts order David Irving to
attend court in Paris to be examined on charges of
being an accomplice to the challenging of crimes
against humanity. (The Fabius-Gayssot Law of 1990,
amending the Freedom of the Press Act of 1881,
expressly forbids contestation des crimes contre
l'humanité). Mr Irving ignores the summons,
telling the British press: "I have not been in
France for years. Either the French government is
off its rocker or my opponents are entering the
final frenzy of defeat." He points out that
under the new law - signed by Socialist President
Mitterand on Bastille Day, July 14, 1990 - it
becomes a criminal offence to question the
long-discredited story of Nazi bars of soap made
from the bodies of Jews, and even to state that the
Russians rather than the |
to
top of page Nazis killed the fifteen thousand Polish
officers at Katyn, which Moscow has now admitted.
"It is designed to stifle all historical debate,"
Irving tells the press, "which is what my opponents
want." Mr Irving has not
been in France for many years. He has however given
several interviews for French television and
newspapers, from his study in London. In August
1994 the French government sends to the British
government a copy of the summons to appear in court
in Paris to answer this Orwellian charge on August
8: ludicrously, the words "gas chambers" have been
blanked out of the passages complained of, under
the new censorship law. Tongue-in-cheek,
the British Home Office forwards the French papers
to Mr Irving but adds a broad hint that there is no
need for a British citizen to comply.
May 30, 1993 The
Australian Federal Court rejects Mr Irving's appeal
against the government's refusal of a visa. The
appeal has cost him $15,000. Undismayed he appeals
to Australia's full Federal Court, backed by
hundreds of supporters throughout
Australia. Simultaneously he
launches onto the Australian market an eighty-five
minute video, The Search for Truth in History,
which he has prepared while in South Africa for
this very eventuality. Ten thousand copies of the
video are distributed, and halls are booked in
seven major Australian cities for public showings
only days after the court announces its
ruling. The Australian
press reports that the Jewish community is
pole-axed by this unexpected move. Its leaders
appeal to the Paul Keating government to ban the
video's release because it has not been submitted
for government censorship. Mr Irving's organizers
move equally swiftly, arranging for the video to be
vetted by the censorship authorities and given a
certificate just twelve hours before the nationwide
showing. Appalled at the
press and television interest in the Irving video,
the enemies of the truth then resort to traditional
methods. Just hours ahead of the nationwide
premiere, six of the seven halls simultaneously
cancel the rental contracts - the Jewish community
swears that the halls have not come under any
pressure from them this time at all. The newspapers
however report threats of demonstrations. The censorship
board, after two viewings, decides to give the
video general release; four members vote for
limited release, and one, who is not identified,
for its banning in the national interest. A few weeks later
the Sydney Morning Herald reports that a microphone
planted by the Mossad has been discovered hidden in
the video censorship authority's viewing
room.
July 1, 1993
On the unprecedented personal orders of Germany's
minister of the interior, Mr Irving is denied
future access to all of their public archives ("to
protect Germany's national interests") and ordered
to leave the archives building in Koblenz
immediately, where he has researched unhindered for
thirty years. The minister is
unaware that the building houses the other half of
Mr Irving's magnificent document collection on the
Third Reich, which he has placed in the archives
over those years; the government is accordingly
obliged to return the collection to England
forthwith. The unique ban is reported around the
world. There is not even a whimper from the tame
German press, let alone from their cowardly
historians.
|
to
top of page July 13,
1993 Over the signature of Pamela J. Massad,
register officer of the Federal Court of Canada,
the judgement is issued in the action by David
Irving against the Minister of Employment and
Immigration. The application was originally to be
considered by Judge Mackay, but was switched at the
last moment to Judge Rothstein who dismissed it
without giving any reasons. Judge Rothstein, in a
one-line
ruling dated July 16 that vouchsafes no
reasons, denies Mr Irving's lawyer's application
for leave to appeal against the illegal deportation
order. One page before and after the judgment
certificate in the official file are withheld from
release by the Canadian Justice department even
now. A copy is rushed to the Department of Justice,
for Kevin Lunney, Toronto counsel to the Justice
department, to deliver to Robert Christie. It is a
bitter and inexplicable setback.
August 24,
1994 Under file number 679/92 Toronto solicitor
Robert C. Christie serves an action by Mr Irving
against the minister and against Kenneth Thomson
the adjudicator in the Court of Justice, Divisional
Court. The papers are served on Thomson on August
29, 1994. Unknown to
Rothstein and his friends however the judicial
review application which Mr Irving and Douglas
Christie lodged at District Court level in November
1992 is still quietly ticking away. The
quasi-judicial hearings and appeal procedures up to
that point have cost Mr Irving nearly $20,000, in
addition to the losses inflicted on him by the
government's illegal interference with his
tour.
September 16,
1993 Victory in Australia! The full Federal
Court, sitting in western Australia, allows Mr
Irving's appeal against the entry ban, declaring
that the minister Gerry Hand took his decision
illegally. It orders him to reconsider, this time
"within the law." Under mounting
pressure from the international Jewish community,
the Australian government has however on February
1, 1993 changed the law to make it possible to
continue the ban on Mr Irving's entry. At a Labour
lawyers' meeting in Perth over a year later, in
September 1994, Professor Laurence Maher, associate
law professor at Melbourne University, will mention
this government trick in warning of the renewed
enthusiasm for censorship in Australia. He gives as an
example, according to the Australian Associated
Press dispatch on the conference, "the passing,
last year, with almost no parliamentary debate, of
changes in the Migration Act |
to
top of page that were then used to keep the controversial
historian David Irving out of Australia." But Prime Minister
Paul Keating is desperate to keep Mr Irving out: he
has obligations to fulfil; his Labour Party's
financial backers are calling in their
markers. Despite repeated
inquiries by newspapers, senators and members of
Parliament, the months pass and Keating's
government announces no decision on Mr Irving's new
application to enter. What is meanwhile
happening in the Australian capital? On October 26,
1993 the Australian ambassador in Bonn notifies his
colleagues in Canberra and Pretoria (!) that
following a phone call four days earlier the Bonn
interior ministry has confirmed that Irving is
prohibited from entering Germany, in case this
damages her relations with unspecified foreign
countries, but that the ban has proven
unenforceable. "Several officials," the embassy
advises, "also mentioned to us that under the
Aliens Law an order can be issued which prohibit
[sic] an individual from engaging in
political activities while in Germany. Irving has
complied with these orders in the past." The embassy
comments: "Although an official characterised them
as being 'effective' in preventing him from giving
public speeches, etc., this strikes us as a fairly
narrow and legalistic approach. There is obviously
a strong political motivation to his visits in
Germany." The ministry of the interior had
continued:
There are other
measures which have been taken against Mr Irving
during his (technically illegal) stays in Germany
in recent years. The Federal Archives in Koblenz,
for instance, have prohibited his entry onto their
premises.
The German ministry
however warns the Australian embassy: "As
elsewhere, these measures have led to a mail
campaign from [Mr Irving's] supporters in
Germany and in other countries." The Germans for
their part ask Australia for "any further
information" that she can provide on the worldwide
bans on Mr Irving. As for Mr Irving's further
avenues of appeal against the Munich conviction,
the Bonn ministry of the interior confidently
predicts: "The chances of success are
negligible." This seems to
support the view that these verdicts are either
rigged or purely political. (In August 1994 two
judges who issue a relatively mild judgement
against revisionist Günter Deckert will be
forced into early retirement on "health
grounds"). Paul Keating's
bloodhounds continue snuffling around. On November
9, 1993 a Mr. Hruby, desk officer at the German
ministry of the interior in Bonn, sends over to the
Australian embassy a four-page digest of German
intelligence data on Mr Irving (Case file IS 2 --
612400II Irving), as well as the page from the
penal code recording Germany's unique law against
defaming the memory of the dead. Copies are placed
on Australian Intelligence (ASIO) files. December 6,
1993 Canberra asks Jim Silva at the political
section of its embassy in Bonn whether the Bonn
ministry of the interior sent the "Irving brief"
under official cover; the reply, on December 14, is
that it was faxed informally by the desk officer at
Bonn's interior ministry, a Mr. Hruby. Nobody wants
to be seen getting involved in an increasingly
dirty operation. Since Mr Irving's
"conviction" in Germany is still under appeal, and
hence not in force, in November 1993 Australia
begins investigating whether Mr Irving is indeed
banned from Italy. The Italian left-wing national
newspaper La Repubblica, they learn, had reported
on June 13, 1992 that Mr Irving's views are
"inspired by the Naziskin movement" [sic]
and that he had been scheduled that day - if he had
not been denied entry - to participate in a meeting
organised by the "Movimento Politico" in Rome. |
to
top of page Both the newspaper's statements are grotesque
lies. "I have never heard of either Naziskins (even
as lampshades), or the Movimento Politico," Mr
Irving notifies his Australian lawyer Ed Wall. "I
was invited to Rome by a university professor to
address students." Remorselessly
drilling deeper, the Australian embassy in Rome
sends a Note Verbale with a further inquiry to the
Italian government, but the Italians, not keen to
get dragged in any deeper, respond only after weeks
of reminders. "Finally," reports the embassy on
January 19, 1994, "this week we were advised that a
formal response is not possible. However the
official from the ministry of foreign affairs was
able to confirm that the newspaper report was
correct." (It was not). The upshot is that
Canberra sends a list of forty questions to Mr
Irving to answer about his friends and associates -
the list has been drawn up by international Jewish
organisations, many of them criminal bands like the
London-based Searchlight burglary and arson gang,
whose director Gerald Gable has Mr Irving to thank
for his criminal conviction for breaking and
entering (caught red-handed by police burglarizing
Mr Irving's apartment) in 1963. Mr Irving files a
sixty-page reply to the forty questions and settles
back to wait. Meanwhile he begins
five libel actions against Australian newspapers
and journalists, all Jewish, which have libelled
him: all of the Defendants formally argue, not that
what they printed is true, but that each is too
poor to defend himself; one produces a copy of the
Legal Aid application made in London by Mr Irving
in his breach of contract action against the
Sunday Times inLondon. Who says
they aren't an international network?
October 1993
Under joint pressure from Jewish
front-organisations and (at Cork) the IRA terrorist
organisation, four Irish universities (Trinity
College Dublin, and the University Colleges of
Dublin, Cork, and Galway) withdraw their
invitations to Mr Irving to lecture, after
expensive poster-campaigns in Dublin and the other
cities call for violence if he attends. Who has
paid for the campaigns?
November 9,
1993 Arriving in Munich to address students, Mr
Irving is confronted by security police in the
restaurant agreed as an initial rendezvous - the
police have learned its name by wiretapping. He is
served with a Munich city order requiring him to
leave Germany for good within twenty-hours. The
"expulsion" is reported instantly in newspapers
around the world. He instructs his lawyers to
appeal against this action, which is illegal under
European Community law. Germany is a signatory of
the Helsinki Accords which forbids precisely this
kind of oppression of free speech.
December 5,
1993 The German constitutional court in
Karlsruhe announces its refusal to hear Mr Irving's
appeal against the "fake gas-chamber" conviction,
offering no reasons other than that the courts have
taken judicial notice of the chambers'
existence.
December 30,
1993 Mr Irving appeals to the American
Historical Association to take up his case (since
the AHA announced in its journal Perspectives that
"for its spring agenda the Professional Division
decided to re-examine past doctrine for handling
allegations of human rights abuses against
historians in other countries.") "I'm finding that
I also have the support of other bodies," writes Mr
Irving, "e.g. the Canadian Writers' Union, so I am
not as alone as I first felt in this unequal
struggle." |
to
top of page The AHA does nothing.
NEW ZEALAND joins the ban. The minister of
immigration writes to warn Mr Irving that, although
he has not yet even applied to visit New Zealand --
for which as a British subject he does not need a
visa -- he will be denied entry. Wendy Ross, leader
of New Zealand's Jewish community, takes the credit
in New Zealand newspapers for this new
ban. December 22,
1993 The outgoing South African government
writes to Mr Irving denying his application to
visit the country in January for three months on
the same conditions and staying at the same place
as the year before. There is uneasy media comment
in the South African press.
January 25,
1994 the South African department of home
affairs explains privately to the Australian
embassy that Mr Irving's visa application has been
refused "because of his 'right wing political
connections' and [because] his entry to
South Africa would not be in the interests of
[the] South African community." Mr Irving refrains
temporarily from any legal action against South
Africa pending resolution of the country's internal
political problems.
LATE IN 1993 David Irving's lecture video
entitled The Search for Truth in History
arrives in Canada from Australia. Canadian Jewish
leaders appeal for a ban but -- as in Australia --
the British Columbia authorities approve release of
the 85-minute video. "The B.C. film classification
board says it doesn't censor films," laments the
Canadian Jewish News on February
3. February 8,
1994 A minor pinprick. Needing a solicitor to
countersign an affidavit in the Australian actions,
Mr Irving calls in at David Brecher & Co.,
solicitors, of Gilbert Street, London. He hands the
notary a gift book, Göring (Macmillan &
Co., London, 1991), to add to the usual fee. The
solicitor refuses to witness the affidavit, and
calls security to have Mr Irving evicted, saying:
"I have personal reasons." He does not specify
why he is unable to sign. "Pen out of ink?"
speculates Mr Irving in his next
ACTION REPORT. "Wanker's
Cramp?" David Brecher,
senior partner, refuses to apologize for his firm's
conduct, and explains to the Law Society that his
partner is Jewish, and that Mr Irving tried to hand
him a book he had written "on the Holocaust." That
is a lie, and the Law Society agrees to investigate
Mr Irving's complaint that a solicitor has refused
to perform his statutory duty, as an officer of the
courts, to witness an affidavit. At every level,
the fight continues.
February 11,
1994 Without any advance warning, police from
West End Central station
|
to
top of page suddenly arrive at Mr Irving's London apartment
and remove him to the notorious Pentonville prison
to serve a three month sentence (without any court
orders, appearance, or hearing) for "contempt of
court." It turns out that,
that morning, counsel for Rowohlt Verlag, a liberal
left-wing German publishing house, appeared in the
High Court and asked for Mr Irving's immediate
committal to prison. Among records later obtained
by Mr Irving's Australian solicitors from the Paul
Keating government's files in April is this
verbatim tape-recorder transcript: Mr
Justice Brooke: "Subject to that, I order that
[Mr Irving] be committed to prison for a
period of three months for his contempt of Court
as I have found it." Later in the
Day Mr Charles
Mackenzie (Counsel): "My Lord, I have been asked
to raise one matter with your Lordship and I
would crave your Lordship's indulgence. It
relates to the time of imprisonment. I would
have moved your Lordship for a sentence of two
years " The transcript
shows that Mr. Justice Brooke considered it a "most
unlikely event" that Mr Irving would serve a prison
sentence: "I would be extremely surprised if Mr
Irving both fails to set aside my order on some
technicality and actually serves three
months." Of course were Mr
Irving to be sent behind bars for two years (and
inevitably ruined) it would certainly serve those
trying to silence him. |
to
top of page When he obtains
a High Court judge's order for his release on
February 22, Mr Irving finds that the solicitors
who applied for his committal to prison are acting
in collusion with the British law firm representing
the Sunday Times and the Australian law
firms representing the five Jewish defendants in
his libel actions Down Under, and that the London
printing firm, B & H. Newman & Co. (run by
a Jewish widow whom Mr Irving has supported with
print orders as an act of personal charity) has
voluntarily supplied them with his confidential
papers. Both the
imprisonment and the release are reported
overnight, sometimes with photos, around the world
-- the Singapore Times, the San Francisco
Chronicle, the Jerusalem Post, the
Melbourne Age being among the interested
newspapers. Paul Keating's men
cannot believe their good fortune. Canberra
immediately faxes to Mr Irving's solicitor in
Perth, West Australia: We have
received advice from London that Mr Irving has
been arrested and is presently serving three
months in prison for contempt of court. Irving replies
within hours direct to the minister: In
order that you may deal with the important
matters without delay, let me dispose of this
trivial matter direct. The judge hearing the
matter in my absence, and without my knowledge,
granted my opponents' application that I be
committed for contempt. I served a sworn
Affidavit and was immediately freed. I cannot forfend
from remarking upon two coincidences: that some
person or persons had fully informed the
opposing solicitors in court of all the court
proceedings which I am bringing Australia; and,
that some person or persons evidently apprised
your own office of this remarkable event
occurring so far away from Canberra... Coincidence
indeed. On February 25, 1994 Australia urgently
instructs its High Commission in London to mine
this new High Court seam for the latest dirt on Mr
Irving -- not easy, as Britain's courts impose a
forty-day non-disclosure rule. "We really have come
up against every brick wall possible," writes Robyn
Bicket from the High Commission. Once again however
officials bend the rules, and a Mrs. Stone, clerk
of the court in London, unofficially briefs the
Australians on what led to Mr Irving's imprisonment
and release. One other matter
looks promising to the Canberra sleuths. On March
22, 1994 Australia faxes to the embassy in Vienna
"urgently" asking them to investigate the truth of
the arrest warrant out for Mr Irving. At first
Vienna pettifogs, talks of Austria's Privacy Laws.
In private however one Austrian official is somehow
persuaded to help. |
to
top of page "Our reliable
source", as the embassy calls him, reporting to
Canberra, tells them all they need to know off the
record "and cannot be quoted." An arrest warrant,
he says, was issued on November 8, 1989 under
Austria's all-embracing political thought-crime
law, the Verbotsgesetz (Revisionism), but it
was, sadly, never executed as Mr Irving had already
left the country. "Whether Irving was on January 13
and July 14, 1993 in Austria could not be
confirmed," reports the embassy. "However if he was
checked against the computer data base on the
boarder [sic] / airport it is
doubtful that he entered Austria." (He did; not
once, not twice, but three or four times since
then.)Simultaneously
Australia diverts considerable taxpayer funds to
trying to prove that Mr Irving was banned from
Germany in March 1990, but had defied the ban; Mr
Irving has however testified on oath that no such
ban was ever served on him. On March 28, 1994
the Australian embassy in Bonn advises Canberra,
after consulting with the German authorities, that
Mr Irving has told the truth - that evidently no
decision had actually been served on Mr Irving and
hence "subsequent entry by Irving into Germany
might not have constituted an offence per se." The
embassy noted that even Munich's expulsion order
made no mention of the "entry ban." The embassy
commented, "We would simply note that Irving is
well networked through his associates and might
have been made aware of the 1990 decision by them.
We have also heard unconfirmed reports that he may
have been turned back at the Netherlands - German
border at one point, only to succeed at another
crossing which was unstaffed at the time. Even if
this can be confirmed, its relevance to the issue
of good character is not immediately clear." Even
Keating's own embassy thus hints to Canberra that
he is scraping the bottom of a very thin
barrel. All this is then
confirmed by German officials at the highest level.
On March 31, 1994 the German Office for the
Protection of the Constitution hands to the
Australian embassy in Bonn this message: The direction to
turn him [Mr Irving] back at the border
dated 9 March 1990 was not an entry ban directed
towards him but simply an internal instruction to
border control authorities. It was not officially
communicated to either him or people in his circle.
Since he was turned back at the German-Netherlands
border at least once, he must have known that the
border control authorities had such an instruction.
The fact that he did not turn back, but travelled
on to the next border crossing and entered at that
point, in our opinion leads to the conclusion that
he wanted to circumvent the instruction to turn him
back. Again this is
circulated to Paul Keating and his entire Cabinet.
But it is all a lie: at no time was Mr Irving in
Holland, nor was he ever turned back, nor did he
duck into Germany at another crossing point. When
Australian files reveal this secret German report
Mr Irving writes to the German government
protesting at this lie and asking for an
explanation; none is ever given. |
to
top of page On April 21
Frank Schoneveld, Australia's Legal Counsel
(Europe), with an office in Brussels, informs
Canberra that their legal advice is that "the
decision of the Supreme State Court of Bavaria
[on November 30, 1993] to dismiss Irving's
appeal means that his conviction remains final and
binding." On April 22 1994 the Australian embassy
in Bonn sends a confidential telex to Canberra,
entitled "David John Irving: German Courts and Nazi
Lies," dealing with the German Federal Court's
judgment in the Deckert case, just published on
April 21; the embassy concludes: "We are inclined to think that the
Federal Court's judgment in Deckert is now even
less likely to support a challenge by Irving and
his lawyers against the Bavarian conviction for
defamation." April 9,
1994 Mr Irving receives out of the blue a
letter from a Mr Bill Goldstein written to his
literary agent on March 4. Goldstein -- no relation
to Baruch Goldstein, the hero of Hebron -- is a
hitherto unknown senior editor at Charles
Scribner's Sons, the financially-strapped New York
publishers who signed a contract with Mr Irving on
April 29, 1988 for his forthcoming biography
Goebbels. Mastermind of the Third Reich.
Goldstein pronounces this death sentence on the
book:
"The Work as delivered has been found
to be unsatisfactory by the Publisher." Odd fact: he has
not read it. He can not have. The Goebbels
manuscript is not mailed to Scribner's until four
weeks after the date of his letter, which
the author receives only on April 9. Mr Irving's
agent writes asking the publisher to justify that
word "unsatisfactory"given that the manuscript has
not even been submitted -- and notifies them that
Mondadori, Italy's second largest publisher, has
written: "It is an impressive work; the writing is
superb." A leading English literary writer, who is
to review the work for the Literary Review,
has added: "The whole Goebbels manuscript
[is] excellent, as good as Milch or
better." "But, there we
are," adds Irving, ironically: We can lead a cart-horse to the water,
but not oblige it to imbibe. I must take
exception incidentally to your suggestion that
there is nothing sinister or troubling about the
books Goebbels or Hitler. I wonder if you are
criticizing what I wrote, or what you and your
pals mistakenly expected that I would write?A
common malaise among editors. May 3, 1994
Having purposefully amended its immigration laws to
the required degree on February 1, 1993, and
despite the September 1993 court ruling, the
Australian government again denies Mr Irving's
application to enter Australia for a lecture tour.
"The Minister decided
|
to
top of page that you did not
meet the good character requirements for the issue
of a visa," writes his aide Elie Joseph to Mr
Irving, then completing a major lecture tour in the
United States. Bolkus tells the
Australian Senate: "I have decided to reject Mr
Irving's application on the basis that he does not
meet the public interest criterion of good
character in the migration regulations as they were
at the time of Mr Hand's decision." [No
such character determination was made by Gerry
Hand, whose ministerial files were ordered released
in confidence to Mr Irving's lawyers at the time of
the mid-1993 court hearings.] The new regulations
issued on February 1, 1993, Bolkus explains, enable
a range of conduct to be taken into account when
assessing a person's character such as a person's
past conduct. "They also prescribe a number of
matters which deem a person not to be of good
character. For example, a deportation order or
exclusion from another country for national
security reasons." Mr Irving, Bolkus informs the
Senate, was deported from Canada in November 1992
and remains inadmissible to that country. In 1993
he was excluded from Germany. The Australian
government announces plans for legislation to ban
"racial vilification." This leads to protests from
the media, who can see where the journey may well
end: "In the name of curbing the unacceptable views
of a few," editorialised the West
Australian, "the legislation puts at risk a
right which lies at the heart of democracy." It
accuses Paul Keating's Labour government, and
immigration minister Nick Bolkus in particular, of
building up a dubious record in their "attacks on
free speech." Told of Senator
Bolkus' remarks that he had not come up to the
requisite character standards, Mr Irving comments:
"Having my character called into question by an
Australian Labour Party minister is an unusual
sensation: I now know how it would feel to have the
cut of my raincoat criticized by television's
Lieutenant Columbo." As for Bolkus's
references to the deportation from Canada and
exclusion from Germany, Mr Irving states that he
has evidence that the Jewish lobby in Australia has
peddled a one-and-a-half-inch dossier of lies to
the Keating government. "It's rich!" he
comments: "It was they themselves who applied
pressure to ministers in Canada and Germany to act
in the illegal way they have. And now they holler
that because I am inadmissible to those countries I
should be excluded from Australia too" "That's
rather like the Menendez Brothers," he continues,
referring to two young men facing trial in
California for murdering their wealthy parents,
"throwing themselves on the mercy of the court
because they're orphans." Speaking to radio
reporters, Isi Leibler, president of the Executive
Council of Australian Jewry, calls historian David
Irving a "criminal." [A reference to the
$25,000 fine slapped on him in Germany for pointing
out that the gas chamber shown to Auschwitz
tourists is a postwar fabrication, as the Auschwitz
authorities now admit.] "A criminal?"
exclaims Mr Irving. "This is pretty ripe coming
from a representative of those wonderful people who
gave the world not only Einstein, Menuhin, and
Freud but also Myer Lansky, Bugsy Siegel, Robert
Maxwell, Ivan Boesky, Michael Milken, Baruch
Goldstein, Menachem Begin " If the law is
rigorously applied, he points out, it must also
prevent Ignatz Bubis, present head of the German
Jewish community, from visiting Australia, because
he was sentenced in 1952 to twelve years
imprisonment for fraud, racketeering, and smuggling
- the basis of his multi-million dollar private
fortune. "Besides," says Mr
Irving, "a law denying entry to 'deportees' and
people with 'criminal records' seems an odd
decision for a nation whose greatness was founded
two hundred years ago on both." The new Canberra
ban attracts widespread media attention.
Australia's coast-to-coast television and radio
channels contact Mr Irving in the United States and
on his return to London he gives four interviews
for Channel Seven and Channel Nine television; the
stations also interview the historian at length for
their June 1994 D-day commemoration programmes (his
book The War Between the Generals was the first to
reveal the depth of the ill-feeling between the
Allied commanders Montgomery, Eisenhower, Patton,
and Bradley.) |
to
top of page May 26,
1994 An article by Caren Benjamin in the
Washington Jewish Week [address: 12300
Twin Brook Parkway #250, Rockville, MD 20852, USA;
tel. 301-230 2222] reveals that Jewish
activists have begun a telephone campaign to
pressure the DC area bookstores including B Dalton,
Border Books, Crown Books and Barnes & Noble
not to stock David Irving's books and in particular
his flagship biography Hitler's War. "The
book was panned by reviewers," lies the weekly,
whose report relies heavily on quotations from the
criminal Anti-Defamation League of the B'nai
Brith. Donna Passanante, a
spokesperson for the Barnes & Noble chain which
has a centralized book buying office [105 Fifth
Avenue, New York, NY 10003, USA; tel. 212-633
4000], comes under pressure as does Glen
Hemmerle, president of Crown Books. Tackled by
Jewish Week, Hemmerle responds that her company
believes in the First Amendment to the U.S.
Constitution which guarantees freedom of
speech.Dissatisfied
with that response, the Jewish weekly then
approaches the public relations department of the
Dart Group [3300 75th Avenue, Landover, MD
20785, USA; tel. 800-831 7400], which owns
Crown. Things here seem at first more promising;
but Stan Rubenstein, their spokesman, says: "The
company tries not to play the role of
censor." Three cheers for
Rubenstein and Hemmerle.
May 27, 1994
On Mr Irving's instructions, his lawyers in West
Australia -- the successful legal team of Ed Wall,
solicitor, and Peter Bates, barrister, who won the
first round in September 1993 -- lodge a fresh
application with the Federal Court in Australia to
set aside the government's ban on his entry. Once
again the government has to lay bare all its
relevant documents and files, and once again they
are bulging with secret manuvering by the world's
Jewish agencies to deny David Irving free speech in
Australia. Most of the inward
telegrams in the David Irving case are found to
have been circulated to the Prime Minister Paul
Keating, as well as his minister of foreign
affairs, the attorney general, and every member of
his Cabinet. A constitutional
issue is involved, the freedom of speech. Here too
the fight continues.
June 4, 1994
A six man squad of hoodlums lies in wait for Mr
Irving outside his London apartment. Out for a
stroll, he sees them first; they escape as police
vans with thirty riot police arrive [See
Radical's Diary, AR#8].
July 4, 1994
The South African embassy phones Mr Irving, who has
again applied for a visa: Pretoria wants to know if
he has completed the Pentonville "prison sentence".
He sets them straight in an immediate
reply.
| to
top of pageJuly 29,
1994 Mr Irving's lawyers start fresh action in
the Canadian courts to overturn his illegal
deportation. The government delays the release of
its secret files to him under the Access to
Information Act until two days past the deadline
for lodging this action.
August 1994
Australia's Channel Nine television, which has
tried since May 20, 1993 to find a local Jewish
Holocaust survivor willing to fly to Poland in
return for a $2,000 fee, with all expenses paid, to
debate with Mr David Irving on the site of the
Auschwitz camp itself, finally gives up the
attempt. On May 10 and 12,
Allen Hogan of Channel Nine's "Sixty Minutes" prime
time programme contacts Mr Irving in the United
States again trying to set up the debate and
confrontation. On June 12 he phones Mr Irving in
London saying he is still searching. Mr Irving faxes
back:
Thank you for your call. You may find
Kitty Hart proper for your purposes; she puts on
a nice little emotional act when she visits A.,
claims to have lain in the sun, sunbathing only
yards away from the "gas chambers" as the
victims were marched in, and watching the S.S.
officers tipping the cyanide crystals in through
apertures in the roof. I.e., she's a
Profi. On the other
hand, I read in the Sydney Morning Herald
of March 23 about a remarkable Mr Steve
Denenberg, executive director of a Jewish
Community Services group which has been giving
counselling and group therapy sessions to a
hundred or so survivors, relatives of survivors
and those upset by the film Schindler's
List, and I think it highly probable he can
put you in touch with at least one native
Australian survivor, which would seem better for
your purposes. Reports Allen
Hogan, he has run into a stone wall. Eventually the
penny drops, and he realizes that the Jewish
community has issued blanket instructions not to
debate. Meanwhile the
Australian Institute of Jewish Affairs -- the same
people who paid to keep David Irving out -- hire
Deborah Lipstadt, professor of religion at
Atlanta's Emory university, to tour Australia by
plane, damping down the burning curiosity of the
Australian people: who is telling the truth about
the Holocaust?July 1994 Deborah
Lipstadt, author of the Anti-Defamation
League's blockbuster book Denying the
Holocaust--The Growing Assault on Truth and
Memory (The Free Press/Macmillan, New York,
1993) made her third tour of Australia on a junket
paid for by the Australian Institute of Jewish
Affairs, and at the invitation of the no less
greasy Gerard Henderson's Sydney Institute. Both
bodies are frantically engaged in damage control
after the two year long controversy over David
Irving's banning from the country has resulted in a
situation where, as the Australian Broadcasting
Corporation (ABC) admitted in July, seventy percent
of the Australians have now heard the claim that
the Holocaust did not happen as legend
maintains. In her book and elsewhere Lipstadt, associate
professor of Modern Jewish and Holocaust Studies at
Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, has
emphasised that there is a danger that when the
last eye-witnesses, as she calls them, have died,
the accepted version of the Holocaust will die with
them. Seemingly in direct contradiction of this
statement, she adds that there are mountains of
documents proving the existence of the gas chambers
and factories of death. "The documents," she writes on page 226
of her twenty-eight dollar book, "include work
orders, supply requisitions, time sheets,
engineering instructions, invoices, and
completion reports. All clearly indicate that
the gas chambers were to be used for nothing but
homicidal gassings." Barely twenty-four hours into her trip across
Australia, she repeated this lie about the
existence of "gas chamber plans" in a radio
interview conducted by Ramona Koval on ABC Radio on
Jul.20. Originalton Lipstadt: "Our best proof to the Holocaust are
the perpetrators. They left us an incredible
amount of documentation, precise documentation.
Plans of the gas chambers, work orders for the
gas chambers, precise requisition forms for
building the gas chambers. They left us with
reports of exactly what happened." November 11, 1994 At a typical lecture to
students in Atlanta she went even further with her
lies, claiming to possess "blueprints" of the gas
chambers "showing the holes in the ceiling through
which the S.S. officers tipped in the lethal
cyanide crystals."
This was the famous lecture attended,
unbeknownst to Lipstadt, by David Irving himself,
whom she had just smeared extensively in her
lecture as an "historian whom no other reputable
historian respects". Invited to state a question,
at the meeting's end, he rose and in front of the
five hundred students attending this compulsory
lecture he plucked a wad of $20 bills from his
pocket and challenged: "Why are you lying to these innocent
students! I have here $1,000 in bills. This cash
is yours, Professor Lipstadt, if you can produce
the 'blueprint' you just claimed to have in your
possession, or if you can even tell us where to
find it. You know it does not exist. Why do you
lie to the students?" Lipstadt angrily called on campus security
guards to throw Mr Irving out. (They approached
him, but did not attempt to evict him after he
called the students' attention to her unorthodox
way of handling debates.) At this Atlanta lecture she proudly took the credit
for having coined the ADL's latest phrase,
"Holocaust deniers". In the Australian media
however she denied it. Words mean more than substance to her. During her
Australian tour she emphasised to what the
Australian Jewish News called a disappointingly
small audience, "I cannot counsel strongly enough
against using the term 'Holocaust revisionism.' It
simply does not exist." She continued: "Those who
seek to debate the Holocaust are not revising
anything. They are simply denying history."
"Instead of supporting Hitler," said Dr Lipstadt,
shocked at the convolutions of her opponents' new
tactics, "they condemn him. But they say the
Holocaust was a hoax and they only want scholarly
conferences. They only want the truth." That was
where the "deniers" had gained ground. In a prime-time television programme aired by ABC
Television Lipstadt admitted that she had refused
to appear on their programme if they also invited a
representative of the other side of the debate: she
would never debate a "denier", she said. Sometimes she had no choice. At her Melbourne
meeting on Sunday Jul.31 when Dr Frank
Knopfelmacher, amidst an uproar, insisted that he
had a copy of Hitler's Order to the extermination
of the Jews (there is no such document in fact)
Lipstadt--no historian, she--bluffed, said that she
too was aware of this document, but dismissed it
outright. Knopfelmacher muttered loudly that he was
a "true" survivor and he used a vulgar word to
describe those like Lipstadt who wished to silence
him. Although a professor of religion Lipstadt has
problems with seeking, finding, and even using the
truth. Believing that Mr Irving would never hear of
her words, she told shocked audiences in Melbourne
and Sydney that he has a lifesize portrait of Adolf
Hitler in his study in London. If so, thirty years
of visiting journalists have never glimpsed it. The
Australian published this letter from David
Irving: I see from Frank Devine that my old
antagonist Deborah Lipstadt is currently touring
the land promoting the Holocaust and denigrating
historians who differ as "Holocaust deniers" (an
odious phrase that she herself invented). Among
other things, she states that I have a portrait
of Adolf Hitler above my desk--a weird and
untrue allegation first made by Moscow's
Izvestia in 1982 (not that I am
suggesting that that is her source). She and her
ilk have a strange idea of historical debate: it
consists of defaming from a safe distance and
refusing to debate face to face in the
traditional manner. I spoke in her home town of
Atlanta, Georgia, at the old courthouse, on Nov.
4 last year: challenged to share a debating
platform with me, she refused, and fled to
Boston, Massachusetts. I wonder who has paid her
surely not modest air fares to, and around,
Australia; I strongly suspect it is the same
gentlemen who have gone to such lengths to keep
me out. Nothing if not inventive in her ripostes,
Lipstadt published in the same newspaper on Aug. 9
a letter denying that she had invented "Holocaust
denier" (Originalton: "I did not create the phrase
'Holocaust deniers'") and claiming that Mr Irving
had spoken not in the courthouse, but
on the steps outside. This attracted
another Irving rebuttal: Sir ,--Accusing me of
playing fast and loose with facts, visiting
American professor of religion Deborah Lipstadt
writes: "Irving did not lecture at the old
courthouse in Atlanta. He tried to hold a
night-time rally on the steps." I am momentarily
baffled. I certainly thought I
spoke inside the Old Court House. Did I imagine
it? Did the eye-witnesses? Just as she imagined
that Hitler portrait over my desk in London?
Then I realised: She of course had gone to
Boston that day, thus sadly missing the chance
of a square debate. In her absence, under the
usual pressure from her pals, the city
authorities cancelled the contract for the Old
Court House; but a judge, sitting that afternoon
in the new courthouse, ordered the city to
honour its contract with us and the lecture went
ahead that evening--inside the building, not on
the steps. It all has such a familiar ring. I'll
happily show Ms Lipstadt the court order in our
favour, if she still wonders which of us is
pulling the wool over the eyes of the
Australians. |
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