- Update on the Zundel Case
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- It's now been more than three months since Ernst Zundel
was transferred to Germany by luxury charter plane, costing the Canadian
taxpayers another $50,000, courtesy of the FCC - translated, your Friendly
Canadian Censors.
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- There has not yet been a charge or any indication why
Ernst is being held in prison. The arrest warrant itself, as far as I can
tell, cites three documents on the Zundelsite and one comment in one of
his Power Letters to his supporters. Ernst reports that 60 kg ( 1 kg is,
roughly, two pounds) of allegedly "incriminating" documents have
been released to his attorney, which tells you how busy Germany's modern
spymasters have been for many years.
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- Looking for what? For an honest opinion from a man whose
knees don't buckle when the Holocaust Lobby says "Boo!"?
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- Meanwhile, we recently experienced a smallish victory
of sorts in that the FBI branch of the Justice Department in Washington,
D.C., declassified another 90 pages of what they have collected on Ernst.
A total of 118 pages were reviewed, which means that 28 full pages are
still being withheld, and even the pages we received have crucial information
redacted. So far, what I spotted is this:
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- [START]
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- - Most of the pages were stamped "Secret" at
first but were declassified only in the fall of 2004. There is one page
that will not be declassified until 2026 ! What could it possibly contain?
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- - In early 2001, were seven (!) FBI and local law enforcement
investigations unleashed on our peaceful existence here in the Tennessee
mountains - all in the period of some three months. All of them cleared
Ernst of any wrong-doing!
-
- - There is an interesting paragraph in the accompanying
FBI letter that reads:
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- - "There are two additional files that may or may
not be identical to the subject of your request. Efforts to locate these
files have been unsuccessful. However, these files have been placed on
special locate. When these files are located and if it is determined that
they are responsive to this request, they will be processed and forwarded
to you at that time." Makes you wonder what might have been in those
files!
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- - There is another similar paragraph that says:
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- - "A search of the automated index of FBIHQ based
upon data submitted and limited pursuant to established policy was not
able to complete this name check to final disposition. There are records
remaining which the computer has been programmed not to eliminate. These
records must be reviewed by IMD/INTD analysts who must then articulate/document
final disposition."
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- - The EZ booklet titled "Ernst Zündel: His
Struggle, his Life" is part of this file. It was received 1/31/01.
-
- - There is a redacted small box and a handwritten text
that says: "See me re this, pls." The name is redacted.
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- - There is another handwritten note, dated 11/27/2000
that says:
-
- - "A little background seems appropriate. You might
check with INS and see if they can help. I'd just as soon Canada's problem
not become ours." Again, the name is blocked out.
-
- - There is a memo "From the desk (name redacted),
dated 7/2/01 that says
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- - "Since this has been designated secret, is there
any easy way to make it a part of 266C - KX - 67509, which has been closed?
I'm really not sure why HQs made this secret in the first place."
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- - Most interesting is one reference that is dated 4/4/2003
- in other words, after Ernst were arrested. Almost all of the text is
redacted, but there are clues that tell us it came from someone we know.
It was sent to the FBI website by email and contains this paragraph:
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- - "First, I must ask that, despite my having provided
my personal information above, that this information not be distributed
and that, if at all possible, I not be contacted via telephone or U.S.
mail. I am taking on great personal risk at passing along this information."
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- [END]
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- So that is it! We will apply to get a judge's order to
release the entire file, unredacted.
-
- The second matter I would like to address is Germany's
schockingly undemocratic censorship practice. Ernst is not allowed to make
any phone calls whatsoever - apparently not even to his attorney. Secondly,
he is not allowed to discuss anything (!) about his upcoming trial, not
even with me. That means that he is not allowed to "vet" potential
witnesses or call on his trusted world-wide advisers for input. We are
completely in the dark what shape that trial - if there is even going to
be any trial! - will take.
-
- I reasoned with myself that even though Ernst cannot
tell me anything about his legal situation, that does not mean I cannot
ask. I asked. I also gave him my opinion on what I would do in his place.
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- That letter never reached him.
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- Therefore, not one to give up easily, I ran off another
copy and shipped it!
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- As to Ernst's letters to friends, there is another limitation
- there is a dearth of letters written in English because of the additional
translator-censorship bottleneck. I still read German fluently, and many
people send me copies of letters Ernst wrote to them, but it does mean
that I cannot post his letters on the Internet as frequently as I did before,
since translating from German to English is difficult for me. Below is
one of his rare letters in English, as always excerpted and slightly edited
by yours truly to make it more precise, since Ernst's writing can best
be described as meandering hither and yon wherever fancy takes he ponders
his woes and delights .
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- Ernst wrote this to Mark Weber of the Institute for Historical
Review:
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- [START]
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- My dear Mark!
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- How nice to hear from you. Thanks for taking the time
to write. I know you are a busy man.
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- Thank you also for keeping my case before the public.
My detractors would love nothing more than to see my case vanish from the
radar screen.
-
- I am uncertain what the criteria [for writing letters]
are. [My attorney] says I can discuss my case. The judge, whose job it
is to censor my mail, seems to have other ideas. Nobody gives me the criteria,
so I don't know what's what. I am asking around but know not whether my
letters are even forwarded to the people from whom I am asking advice.
An amazing situation. Kafka would have loved my case - George Orwell undoubtedly
also. The one man who could have related to it would have been Francis
Parker Yockey. However, I am not inclined to go this route - please note!
[Ingrid's comment: Yockey, author of the classic "Imperium",
somewhat of a Bible of the Right, allegedly committed suicide in an American
prison. It is likely that he was murdered.]
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- I'll keep mum on the topic today.
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- I find my own life a bit trying at times, especially
of course in the last 29 months, but then [my Canadian attorney] told me
rather sternly two years ago: "Ernst, what did you think? It was never
easy to become an historical personality!"
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- Naturally, it's no fun to be locked up in an old fortress-like
dungeon with walls a meter thick for 22 hours and 45 minutes. Prison is
prison. But it sure is nice to be sitting on a real solid chair and not
a wobbly stack of court documents, and to have a nice, square, white arborite
covered table with my own coffee pot, Melitta filter coffee which I can
brew day or night, or to eat an apple, or to make myself some nice hot
lemon juice [drink] with a touch of honey in it - or, when my body demands
some Omega 3 or 6 oil, to open a can of sardines from the prison store.
Luxuries I missed for two years in the U.S. and Canada!
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- As you can see, I have a fountain pen! Imagine a real
fountain pen in prison, thanks to the generosity of a lady supporter in
Berlin. I have enough refills, 1.55 Euro for five cartridges - expensive!
But man oh man, what a luxury! My thoughts finally can flow out of me!
Not the awkward feeling of having to press out my every word with a dull
pencil or even a ball point pen. What a relief!
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- I have brushes, inexpensive school children type paints.
I have my own pencil sharpener. I can buy note pads, even drawing paper,
some even in a large format. What luxury!
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- I was able to buy myself a Gillette Track III razor in
the prison store. I am allowed to keep it in my cell.
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- I am sitting here at midnight, looking at my wrist watch
the judge allowed me to have - another thing I was not allowed to have
for two years in Canada or the U.S. I have a mirror now to see my own face
in two years. The windows in my cell are wide open, day and night, and
I have the luxury of switching on my own light or turning it off. It's
heaven - in prison!
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- If I want to, and the authorities okay it, I could buy
myself a radio with a built-in CD player or even a color TV connected to
cable. With all these luxuries and these amenities I forget sometimes that
I am in prison and am actually annoyed when the guards open the steel door
to bring me my mountains of mail - 25 to 30 letters are not a rarity. The
staff is all German, and the Protestant minister mentioned in his sermon
today that there are apparently 60 different nationalities in this prison.
And I thought things were rough in Canada and the USA! Not so! Imagine
these poor prison officials! I would not want to have their job for any
money in the world. They are not nice jobs, let me tell you! You and I
- we have had the best job in the world! We did what was a socially useful
job which needed to be done, and we had the freedom to do it - and, until
9/11 especially in America, we had the freedom to state our case!
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- I often dwell on the freedoms we enjoyed in America when
I read the writings of Thomas Jefferson - what he had to say about the
organization of the state and his very, very prescient predictions of what
could, and did in fact, happen to this new Republic if the citizenry was
not very careful and very vigilant, especially if the legislative branch
did not jealously guard and constantly assert its primacy, its paramount
power over the state, the executive branch and the judicial system, especially
the judges! Oh Jefferson, where are you now?
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- It warms my heart to read and to know that our race produced
men like Jefferson, Washington, Ben Franklin, and James Madison, to mention
just some of my favorites. When I read what these men promulgated at a
time when America had the population 1796 of 4.6 million Whites in that
census, and realize that Frederick the Great's Prussia had 4.4 million
a few decades earlier, it gives one pause to ponder why [now] all the many
millions are necessary - for what? All of Europe, which was at one time
allied with France against Frederick the Great, was made up of only 90
million Europeans. Imagine that! In its heyday, the City of Rome had 1
million people, [a city population] not again reached till London crossed
the 1 million mark in 1804. Paris and Berlin lagged way behind - even Vienna
did. And then, suddenly, this vast population explosion in 150 years! An
amazing development, to be sure!
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- I recently read a book from our prison library. In all
of Toronto's West Detention Centre, there was not one book - here, they
have several thousand in 10 languages. This book was first published in
England and was entitled there "Man and Water", the story of
man's attempt at artificial irrigation and pure drinking water. It was
one fantastic book about largely Aryan achievement of building dams, irrigation
canals - in short, making the desert bloom the world over. And there is
no doubt whatsoever that America was/is the New Rome - alone when it comes
to building vast dams, reservoirs, aquaducts etc. It warms one's heart
what we as a people are capable of! I am frequently so captivated by these
topics that I am able to delve into that I forget that I am, in fact, in
prison! Now mind you, I would prefer to be in beautiful Tennessee with
Ingrid and watch a gorgeous sunset over the Smoky Mountains, but it was
not meant to be - not for a little while anyway. Somehow, some inscrutable
destiny had other thoughts, and it will manifest itself what my role is
to be in this struggle for freedom.
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- Nomen est omen, the Romans are alleged to have said.
[Ingrid's comment: The name "Zundel" means, loosely translated,
to spark something]
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- There is no doubt that my enemies seem to have detected
something in Ernst Zundel, the peasant boy from the Black Forest, that
seems to have eluded my friends, even myself. What could it be? What irks
them? After all, look at all the effort they have expended over three decades
- to achieve for themselves WHAT? What exactly is it that they have achieved
by all their conniving and Herculean labor? Is their railroading of me
- WHAT? To inflict discomfort? Pain? Misery? Embarrassment? Loneliness?
Humiliation? Bankruptcy of me, the 66 year old artist? A man with no university
degree, no forces to threaten them?
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- What a policy goal!
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- I am reminded of Stalin's remark: "How many divisions
has the Pope?"
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- No troops were necessary to sink the Evil Empire. I take
comfort in knowing that the Bolshevik Monsters' regime is dead and gone,
and candles are flickering in thousands of churches in the former Soviet
Empire and Gulag state. All it took was ideas and truths - and dedication
by those who held those truths to be [self]-evident. Yes, Mark! Ideas and
truths are powerful things and dangerous weapons to tyrants.
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- No people certain of their power need to treat a man
like me the way they treated me for 30 years!
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- [END]
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