Diary: May 13, 2005

Real History, Deborah Lipstadt, and Anne FrankDocuments on the

An
Australian judge has on that score alone
— our unsuitability as recipients! —
found no difficulty in overturning the deceased’s wishes and awarding the estate to his disgruntled sister.

May
11, 2005 (Wednesday)
Key
West (Florida)

MORE work in the evening on the Lina
Heydrich papers, for my Heinrich Himmler biography; excellent stuff on Reinhard
Heydrich and his character, more marginal about Himmler though there are some nice stories, including an exploding joke-cigar, which was left lying around his Sicherheitsdienst headquarters.
When I have finished transcribing Lina’s stuff I will post it on the website and invite commentaries.

May
12, 2005 (Thursday)
Key
West (Florida)

I READ the Birnbaum interview of Lipstadt over lunch, and later send it to [my barrister] in London: “This interview of Lipstadt will surely amuse you; she comes clean on a number of points. Her malice comes through thick and sticky.” She seems to be totally unaware of how much the trial actually cost, with its appeals (and not counting my own time and expenditure of course). There is discussion of my archives — Birnbaum even asks how much of it I
“stole”!

Now of course is has all been stolen from me by Lipstadt’s lawyer friends. That is Round
Five, coming later this year. It seems that she is having difficulty persuading any London publisher to peddle her latest book in the UK. I wonder why!

An Australian, Michael Murphy, died in
2002, it turns out — I amend my mailing list —
and left part of his estate to myself, Ernst
Zündel, and other incorrigibles. I was unaware of this, but no matter. The international community sent in the usual fire brigade to hose that risk down.

From a message received today, it seems that an Australian judge has on that score alone — our unsuitability as recipients! — found no difficulty in overturning the deceased’s wishes and awarding the estate to his disgruntled sister.

That reminds me of my late benefactor Max
K., who told me and his friends that he had left me “everything” — the two million dollar proceeds of his machine-tool business in California
— to enable me to carry on the fight. After he died, his family claimed that there was no new will since 1982, and his widow even pursued me through the courts for the sums of money he had provided to the cause.

In fairness to the widow, I must add that m’learned friends advised me that had the will in my favour been found and submitted I would have spent the rest of my life in the law courts fighting off her and her sons. And Max’s California lawyers, while they confirmed to me in 1998 that such a will did exist, were not sure he had gotten around to signing it at the time he died. I never pursued the matter, as that would be foreign to my nature.

I phone Benté in London; sounds less well, and I offer to come back sooner. I pass three
Copenhagen book orders for “Nuremberg, the Last
Battle” to her.

I have started reading a manuscript on the US
Conservation Corps. It will be enjoyable, I think.
I am always willing to learn.

FROM Brisbane, Australia, Beatrice emails that her bank has received the thousand dollars I emailed her — proceeds of my little 15,000-mile road tour of the US.

“Hi, Daddy . . . phew! Thanks
again very much, it’s been a big help to us.
Mummy is here until 6 June, I can’t believe how
fast the time is flying, it’s going to be so sad
when she leaves, since we hadn’t seen each other
in nearly four years and who knows when we’ll
next see each other. Mummy has become quite
attached to Olivia too, she always has been keen
on babies, as you know! Here are some photos we
took at the koala sanctuary a couple of weeks
ago.”

She is now an Australian citizen and works for the government. I wonder if I will ever see any of them — Beatrice and her new daughter Olivia.

I reply that I’ll help, depending on circumstances, if her mother wants to travel to
Australia again, given that I myself am prevented (by their prime minister John Howard) from going there.

Reminded in parliament that Australian law makes it mandatory to allow visas to next-of-kin, Howard replied: “In that case we shall have to change the law again to keep Mr
Irving out!” (They changed the Immigration Act already, after the full federal Court declared that the immigration minister had illegally refused me a visa in 1993).

May
13, 2005 (Friday)
Key
West (Florida)

I
PHONE London to say that Benté can withdraw nearly all the remaining money to pay school fees. (That’s all the money left from my grand tour.)

Jessica answers (eventually) the phone, says she has literally just got home from school. . . She says they were in the school library today and a friend was reading a new book about Anne
Frank which has photos and a caption about a “Holocaust denier,” “racist,” and “anti-Semite.”
“Look, that’s your father isn’t it,” the friend asked her.

Charming, the schoolbooks they get to read, clumsy propaganda stuffed down their tiny throats.
I tell her I corresponded many years ago with
Otto Frank, Anne’s father, about the authenticity of Anne’s diaries (the letters are now in the Sammlung Irving, at the Institut für Zeitgeschichte). I mention to her the ballpoint ink, the three different versions, etc., but I do not press the point.

Jessica says knowingly that Anne’s sister
Margot died of typhus, didn’t she? I say,
“Yes, in Bergen-Belsen.”
I add that Anne herself died there of typhus, after being evacuated from Auschwitz; and that her father Otto, who had elected to stay behind, having contracted the disease too, was being looked after by the (German) camp hospital staff at Auschwitz when the war ended. “It is all a very sad story,” I tell her.

I wonder how many girls called Anne, and of her age, wrote diaries in
Dresden?

“But you are anti-Jewish aren’t you
Daddy,” she teases.

What is “anti-Jewish?” Are Rachel
Corrie’s parents “anti-Jewish” now? Is the entire population of the Gaza Strip anti-Jewish yet?

I remind her that it is these people who have systematically smeared me for over forty years, and that when I unsuccessfully tried to defend myself against their global vendetta they seized our home of thirty-eight years and all its contents, including all her toys; but I regret saying that as soon as the words are out. It is not the Christian way to bear malice.
Besides — the phone card is running out.

Benté phones back, but is not well enough to keep figures in her head.

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