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2. Michael Rothe
Michael Rothe is the owner of European Sound Imports, at
109 King Street W. in Kitchener. According to the K-W Record,
he is a native of southern Germany, who came to Canada
eight years ago. His stereo store might appear harmless on
the outside, but on the inside, one can obtain anti-Semitic
propaganda from a variety of sources. According to the
Record, in addition to the book by Fred Leuchter mentioned
above, one can also purchase a booklet on the court battles of
pro-Nazi publisher Ernst Zundel. Rothe also believes that the
Holocaust has been greatly exaggerated, and that there is a
world-wide Jewish conspiracy behind it. "They want money.
When they have money they have power," he has been
quoted as saying. Although Rothe has claimed, "I have not
seen a neo-Nazi before," according to the Record, he attended
a recent "victory party" for Ernst Zundel, and Zundel was
recently sighted at his store. When I asked Rothe if he knew
what Irving would speak on, he claimed, "Irving comes to
speak on Germany ... only Germany." When I pointed out that
this was false, that Irving actually spends a significant portion
of his speeches discussing how the Holocaust is a hoax, he
repeated, "No, that is wrong -- Irving only speaks about
Germany." However, the posters Rothe himself has put up
belie this claim--they list the Holocaust as a topic of Irving's
speech.
3. David Irving
David John Cawdell Irving is a British "historian", born in
1938.
According to David Cesarani of the Wiener Library in London,
England, he attended Imperial College at the University of
London, but never graduated. He holds no academic degree
and no academic position at any university or college.
He calls himself a "moderate fascist", and claims, among
other things that the gas chambers at Auschwitz (in which an
estimated 2-3 million people died) were "built by the Poles
after the war as a tourist attraction." (For this remark, he was
fined DM 10,000 by a Munich court in May 1992.
The judge was quoted as saying that the gas chambers of
Auschwitz were "an historically certain fact.")
Irving denies being a "Holocaust denier" or "Hitler apologist",
and seems willing to resort to legal action if necessary.
In a recent fax printed in the K-W Record, he is reported as
saying, "I have warned 22 British newspapers that I shall not
hesitate to commence libel action if they use smear phrases
such like 'Hitler apologist' or 'Holocaust denier' to embellish
their writings." But Bernard Levin, writing in The Times of
London in May of this year, quoted Irving as saying, "I hope
the court will fight a battle for the German people and put an
end to the blood lie of the Holocaust which has been told
against this country for 50 years." Irving first entered the
headlines in 1970.
In July of that year, he was forced to apologize in the High
Court of London for "making a wholly untrue and highly
damaging statement about a woman writer."--not an
auspicious start for someone who claims to be in pursuit of the
truth.
Later that year, Irving was back in the headlines, concerning
publication of his book, "The Destruction of Convoy PQ17".
Ostensibly an expose of an ill-fated 1942 Arctic convoy
headed for the Soviet Union during World War II, it eventually
resulted in Irving being fined 40,000 British pounds for libel.
Irving's book faulted Captain John Broome, commander of the
convoy at the time, saying he was guilty of "downright
disobedience" and "downright desertion of the convoy."
Broome brought suit against Irving for false statements, and
won a judgment in August of 1970.
Irving's lawyers appealed, and lost in March, 1971.
The case is revealing because of what it says about Irving's
abilities as a historian and his motives as an author.
According to the Times of London, Irving showed a copy of the
manuscript to Broome before publication. Broome objected to
the accuracy of some thirty passages in the book, and
threatened to sue for libel if Irving did not make changes.
At that point, William Kimbers Ltd., Irving's publisher, notified
him that they would not publish the book as it was then
written. Later, Irving published the book with another
publisher.
The court found that Irving "was warned from most
responsible quarters that his book contained libels on Captain
Broome ... To make [the book] a success he was ready to risk
libel actions ... Documentary evidence .... showed that [Irving]
had deliberately set out to attack Captain Broome and in spite
of the most explicit warnings persisted in his attack because it
would help sell the book." The court labeled Irving's conduct
as "outrageous and shocking."
Irving's misrepresentations did not end with the publication of
his book.
According to Cesarani, in 1979, a German publisher had to
pay compensation to the father of A
German edition of Irving's book, Hitler's War.
Irving had claimed that A
Irving claims that according to his "research", the Holocaust is
greatly exaggerated.
(He was recently quoted in the K-W Record as saying that the
number of Jews who died in concentration camps was "of the
order of 100,000 or more.") But during the 1988 trial of
pro-Nazi publisher Ernst Zundel, he was forced to admit under
cross-examination that he hadn't even read all of Eichma
1960 trial testimony.
(In this testimony, Eichma
discussed the so-called "Final Solution to the Jewish
problem''-- extermination, in 1942.) In November 1991, a
reporter from the Independent showed that Irving omitted
crucial lines from a translation of Goebbels' diaries -- lines that
would have contradicted his theory that Hitler knew nothing
about the extermination of the Jews.
Irving's record is clear: he is not an historian, and he has
made false statements and been forced to apologize for them.
As Andrew Cohen, reporter for the Financial Post, has said,
"David Irving should be denied credibility."
4. Eustace Mullins
According to analyst Chip Berlet of Political Research
Associates, Mullins is quite simply, "the most vicious
anti-Semite on the face of the planet." Eustace Clarence
Mullins, born in 1923, is the author of a biography of Ezra
Pound (a copy exists in the University of Waterloo library). But
he is also the author of numerous truly bizarre tracts published
by small Christian publishers. Some of these, like the excerpt
recently posted and then removed by Kitchener store owner
Rothe, are critiques of the banking system. Berlet says,
"Mullins masks his anti-Semitism with a critique of the [U.S.]
Federal Reserve System." In a 1952 book, Mullins wrote a
book blaming Paul Warburg, Bernard Baruch, and other U.S.
Jews for drowning Americans in debt.
According to Mullins, The Federal Reserve Act of 1913 put the
nation's banking reserves in the hands of the "Jewish
International Bankers" for the purpose of carrying out a plan
for world dictatorship. In a 1955 article entitled, "Jews mass
poison American children", Mullins claimed that the polio
vaccine, invented by Jonas Salk, was a poison because it