I don't know what his immigration status is, but he is a bad boy -- Abraham Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League

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February 8, 2003

Reknowned Neo-Nazi activist held in Blount County jail

by Anna C. Irwin
of The Daily Times Staff

A GERMAN national known for his claim there was no mass extermination of Jews before and during World War II is being held at the Blount County Jail.

Ernst Christof Friedrich Zündel, 63, has been called 'Canada's leading pro-Nazi and Holocaust-denial propagandist' by the Anti-Defamation League, an organization founded to combat anti-Semitism.

Zündel is being held for the Immigration and Naturalization Service pending action regarding an alleged immigration violation. He was taken in custody Wednesday at his home in Wear's Valley.

Sevier County Chief Deputy Doug Watson and Sgt. Darrel Lee accompanied INS agents led by Gary Slaybough who made the arrest.

Slaybough, head of the INS office in Knoxville, said the arrest was made without resistance. Sarah Mouw, a spokesman for the INS district office in New Orleans said Zündel is 'not in a legal immigration status. In layman's terms, it is an expired visa.'

Zündel's wife, Dr. Ingrid Rimland Zündel, said in a report on the Web site dedicated to Zündel's activities that her husband was told he had failed to show up at a scheduled immigration hearing in May 2001. She said they were never notified of a hearing.

The Zündels left Canada and moved to Sevier County in early 2001 after several lengthy court battles, some regarding his publishing activities including books, pamphlets and videos with titles such as 'Did Six Million Really Die?' and 'The Hitler We Loved and Why.'

The verdict in one of his most recent court battles denied his bid for Canadian citizenship. He has lived in Montreal and Toronto since immigrating in 1958 at age 19 to avoid the draft in his native Germany.

His autobiography 'Zündel-Haus' published on Zündelsite, a Internet site maintained by his wife, said he had been taught to 'hate Hitler and all he stood for and had been brainwashed by Allied occupation authorities-produced books in post-war German Schools.'

However, he said in the autobiography he learned after he came to Canada how to 'counter the poison, the false picture of history.' He worked as a graphic artist and eventually founded Samisdat Publishers Ltd. The company was known as a major outlet for Holocaust-denial materials.

Website note: Abraham Foxman, wealthy and controversial chief of the Anti Defamation League, likes to refer to himself as a "Holocaust survivor." As a biography on this website shows, he was not even born when Hitler invaded his native Poland, and he was looked after by Polish Catholics throughout the war; his parents also "survived".

Zündel no longer publishes such materials, but his Web site is considered by the Anti-Defamation League as a 'repository of Holocaust-denial propaganda.'

The Canadian government tried to shut down the Web site based on the Canadian Human Rights Act. A tribunal ruled in January 2002 that it is illegal to create and maintain a 'hate' site in Canada. 'Zündelsite' now operates from the United States and is updated regularly by Zündel's wife and lists a Pigeon Forge address to send donations.

The INS would not say if or when Zündel may be scheduled for a court appearance, possibly in the nearest immigration court at Memphis or in the court serving the district office in New Orleans.

'I don't know what his immigration status is, but he is a bad boy,' Abraham Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League, said in an interview with Knoxville-based Associated Press writer Duncan Mansfield from the group's New York headquarters.

'He is an anti-Semite, a Holocaust denier. He is somebody America could do without,' Foxman said, 'but I am sure his legal rights will be protected.'