Major film on life of Fred Leuchter (LeuchterFilm6)

Posted
Wednesday, December 29, 1999

More
Reviews of the Fred Leuchter film

http://www.nypost.com/commentary/20682.htm

New York, December 29, 1999

Mr.
Death Sums Up Moral History of
Century

by Rod
Dreher

THE Holocaust, in which the most culturally and technologically advanced nation on earth systematically murdered a people in the name of an Idea, is the signal event of the 20th century.
Stalin and Mao practiced variations on the theme.

How could such a thing happen? The peculiar case of a little man from Malden,
Mass., named Fred Leuchter Jr. goes a long way toward explaining it.

Leuchter is the title character of “Mr.
Death,” another riveting nonfiction portrait of an eccentric personality by the great filmmaker Errol
Morris.

Morris’ film, which opens tomorrow, is a tale of how a garrulous, mild-mannered Everyman gave his mind over to pure evil. It offers nothing less than a moral history of mankind in the 20th century.

Leuchter, the son of a state prison official, developed early on an obsession with death — specifically, prison executions. As an adult, the affable egghead taught himself enough engineering to become a much-sought-after expert on electric chairs, gas chambers and the like.

In 1987, the neo-Nazi Ernst
Zundel was put on trial in Canada for denying the Holocaust, a crime there. He commissioned Leuchter to travel to
Auschwitz to evaluate the ruins of the crematoria there.

The result was “The
Leuchter Report,” which concluded that no one could have been gassed at Auschwitz. The report was thrown out of court, but has had a galvanizing effect on the Holocaust-denial movement.

“Mr. Death” makes it crystal-clear that
Leuchter’s analysis is hopelessly faulty, and that Holocaust denial is utter nonsense. And yet, Leuchter, consumed by vanity and pride, still believes he is correct.

Morris, who is Jewish, doesn’t believe
Leuchter is a Jew-hater.

Leuchter sees himself as a
Galileo figure, a courageous martyr for free speech and scientific inquiry.

Here’s the rub: He thinks he’s a hero.

This is what makes Leuchter so fascinating, and disturbing — and an unlikely metaphor for us all in this century in which much evil has been committed and defended by people who believed they were doing good.

Is amiable Fred Leuchter guilty of thoughtlessness, of leading an unexamined life?

Yes, but Morris says this blindness comes not from neglecting to think; it comes from turning his mind’s eye away from reality to the “truth” one would prefer to see.

“That’s more disturbing, construing the world to suit your own purposes, despite evidence to the contrary,” he says.

Morris wants audiences to come away from the film wondering about themselves.
How do we know we’re not like good old
Fred, who looks about as dangerous as
Don Knotts?

We celebrate freedom of expression, for example, as a virtue. But will our descendants consider us criminally insane for creating a culture where lurid sex and extreme violence were mainstays of popular entertainment?

What about
abortion, of the killing of 1.6 million
unborn American children annually? Will
people a hundred years from now think
of us as we do about ordinary Germans
of the Nazi era: as willing accomplices
to mass murder?

This next hundred years will tell much.
The tragic rise and fall of Fred Leuchter is a timely warning that the unreflective egotism and hysterical optimism of modern man is a blind trap leading to what
Robert Conquest, the great historian of the Soviet terror, calls
“mindslaughter.”

The rest follows.

Related
stories on Fred Leuchter: the Movie (“Mr
Death”):

• Early
  stories, Boston Herald, etc., Jan
  1999
• Acclaim
  for Leuchter film at Sundance Film
  Festival, Jan 27, 1999
• Mark
  Singer’s review article Feb 1, 1999 in
  The New Yorker
• George
  Jonas comments in review that Stalin
  and Mao killed tens of
  millions
• Canada’s
  Lions Gate Entertainment picks up North
  American rights to the documentary “Mr.
  Death: The Rise and Fall of Fred A.

  Leuchter Jr.”

• NY
  Daily News, Dec 29, 1999: Irony is good
  for the blood
• New
  York Post, Dec 29, 1999: Mr. Death Sums
  Up Moral History of Century
• Los
  Angeles Jewish Journal, Dec 24, 1999:
  on Errol Morris and Mr. Death
• More
  news about the new movie by Errol
  Morris “Mr Death: The Rise and Fall of
  Fred A.

  Leuchter, Jr.”

• Erroll Morris admits he
  had to alter this film on life of Fred
  Leuchter, after Jewish
  complaints
• New
  York Times Reviews the film Dec 26,
  1999
• Forensic Chemist Roth comments
  he would have made different findings
  if he knew source of fragments was
  Auschwitz

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Point 1999 write to David Irving