A moving and remarkable testimony by Ernst Zündel

Our friend Joe Fallisi has struck again! Thanks to him I’ve just discovered a remarkable video recorded interview given in English by Ernst Zündel to a black female high school student in the late 1990s. This video, Students, the Holocaust and Free Speech (running time 1h 23min), was completely unknown to me. It is remarkably limpid, instructive and unsettling.

It deals in particular with the two major trials that Zündel had to face in Canada in 1985 (lasting seven weeks) and in 1988 (lasting over four months). Both times, in spite of a dazzling defence that routed the prosecution, he lost and received a prison sentence. Suddenly, on August 27, 1992, a miracle happened: the Supreme Court of Canada ruled that the law under which the convictions had been decided (a law pertaining to the publication of “a statement, tale or news that [its publisher] knows is false”) was unconstitutional in that it infringed the guarantee of freedom of expression contained in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

The list of horrors and persecutions endured by Zündel was, already at that time in his life, impressive. However, he was never granted any of the compensation to which he seemed to be entitled as of August 27, 1992. On the contrary, following certain revolting machinations by his opponents he was, in 1998, to find himself in a new court, a quite “special” one, made up of a judge and a judgess and no jury. Furthermore, the two judges of this “Human Rights Tribunal” had been recruited according to their “sensitivity” with respect to anti-semitism! Of course the accused was easily convicted once again. As for the final years of Zündel’s existence, they were to turn into a nightmare, with Canada, the United States and Germany combining their efforts to inflict the very worst on him. He died in Germany on August 5, 2017, without ever having been able to return to the United States and rejoin his wife, Ingrid Rimland-Zündel who, in turn, died on October 25 of the same year.

A book to read: Barbara Kulaszka (ed.), Foreword by Robert Faurisson, Did Six Million Really Die? / Report of the Evidence in the Canadian « False News » Trial of Ernst Zündel-1988, Samisdat Publishers Ltd, Toronto 1992, VIII-564 pages (large format).

April 10, 2018