- In a letter to his wife, ethnic novelist Ingrid Rimland,
Ernst Zundel ponders the mood of the opening of Germany's Holocaust Heresy
Trial:
-
- My dear Ingrid -
-
- Never before have I been confronted with such a situation
- it is in every respect surreal. Only you with your artistic
nature would fully comprehend it. Here is the clip: I am the captain
of my ship, captain of my soul, and like [the hero] in the Odyssey, I have
just passed through some hair-raising storms and travails and have been
more or less shipwrecked on some foreign shore. I don't have any
maps of these, for me, uncharted waters. So I hire someone who, like
Mark Twain, knows the mighty Mississippi River, and tells me, the captain:
Turn here. Cross there. Avoid this rock, that shoal. Watch
the sand bank over there. My lawyers, who have had a lifetime of
experience in navigating in these dangerous and tricky German waters, tell
me to take a course of action totally at odds with what my instincts tell
me I should do.
-
- The lousiest decisions in my life were always those when
my mind overruled my intuition. The worst results stemmed precisely
from this dichotomy. To all other people this would sound odd, but not
to you, for you know me by now pretty well. You sensed that I was working
on an intuitive plan. I formulated it, outlined it - and saw it torn
to shreds by the reality of the legal system as it exists - not as it is
written in the criminal code of present-day, post-WWII Germany. Now I sail
my ship of fate in unfamiliar waters on the guidance of people who are
my trusted advisors, but whose instincts I distrust. Apparently there
is a vast difference in Germany between the letter of the law and the spirit
of the law as applied - far more pronounced, it seems to me after yesterday's
encounter with the lawyers, than even in America or Canada.
-
- Thus, my lady, what will unfold is not my intuitively
arrived-at solution, which I not only felt but intellectually believed
would have allowed the German justice system to extricate itself from an
impossible cul de sac into which the politicians have driven the people,
into which opportunistic legislators, financed by and beholden to powerful
lobbies, the bane of modern societies, have forced them. It will
ultimately lead to this civilization's collapse. I firmly believe
this. This is how Greece, Rome, Czardom and Weimar perished!
In the context of German reality, at this time, as I find it in the courtroom
in Mannheim, I have little choice but to take my pilots' advice - or risk
an even greater shipwreck.
-
- One day, Ingrid, when all this is over, I will explain
my plan to you and to the world at large. This is not the time, not
the place, not the right medium in the form of a letter to be read in a
few days by the very man who will sit in judgment over me. I have
spent many weeks and months plowing through 30 four-to-five inch thick
ring binders of "evidence" gathered by the German states' various
police forces, intelligence agencies, snitches and informants. Ingrid,
the German authorities do not lack information about what the issues are
that confront them and concern them and their history. The problem
is how they use, or misuse, that information.
-
- I give you an example of the spirit afoot here.
A 78-year-old academic of high rank tried bravely to defend himself by
explaining, very cautiously and carefully phrased, why he had certain views
and doubts - and was promptly recharged again! He defended himself
again - and was recharged for the third time! It took my breath away
when, last night and this morning, I read the details of this case, and
others - all 2004-2005 cases! - that convinced me to let my head overrule
my intuition.
-
- The German people must find their way out of this dilemma
collectively. I alone cannot achieve it for them. My fellow
independent thinkers cannot achieve it for them. The playing field
is not level. The goal posts are being changed daily.
-
- ===
-
- I am afraid the veneer came off yesterday. It was good
that it came off so early in these proceedings! My lawyers were proven
right. Had I insisted on my plan, I would have looked like Hans-guck-in-die-Luft.
[Ernst is referring to a German parable of a boy with his head in the clouds,
not watching where he is going] Since I saw friends from all over
in the audience, I am sure that you will have had reports about what went
on inside. Since I saw the judicial system and its representatives of this
current German entity in action, I think it is better I censor myself severely!
-
- The 8th November '05 hearing was in content and in conduct
something that school children will one day read about. It will one
day be part of the German law school curriculum - trust me, Ingrid!
I saw all kinds of people in the court room - from Chile, Paraguay, the
US, England, Canada, France, Belgium, Austria - I was actually surprised
that so many people came from so far away to show their moral support!
The room was large, bright, the sound system was far superior to what it
was in Canadian courtrooms. 97% of the time one could hear clearly
what Dr. Meinerzhagen said or read from documents. He looked again,
unnervingly, like my mentor, Mr. Arcand. The prosecutor is an elegant,
good-looking, well-groomed man of maybe 42-45 years, with bright eyes,
good skin, clear diction - but his job is his job.
-
- Ingrid, they will prevail in the courtroom. But
Truth in History has been the winner since my February 1981 postal hearings.
-
- It was proven to me one more time that German people
are ill-equipped as hypocrites. Very quickly the German penchant for directness
and honesty comes to the surface - and that's what happened in court yesterday.
Germans will be Germans! [Had you been here], you would have seen
some live fire exercises in the authoritarian personality syndrome in action!
Ingrid, these people chafe under this Allied-devised and conquerors'-imposed
situation and its institutions as if they were wearing the proverbial hair
shirt.
-
- What I saw yesterday makes me realize how lucky I was,
and how fortunate for the German Cause and history it was, that I fought
all my historic trials in a country under an organically evolved British
Common Law based legal system. What we were able to achieve there,
THEN, would simply have been impossible under the system in place here,
at this time. There is a God in Heaven who destined Ernst Zundel
to do his work and live his most vital and important years in an Anglo-Saxon
environment. I am happy about that. All the sophistry, the mental
barf they spread via the media over the German people comes into direct
confrontation with eternal truths and concepts to the point that it gives
me goose pimples. The tragedy for Germany is that the laws were legislated
by the very people the mass-circulation Bild-Zeitung called "the grand
coalition of thieves." I agree with you about "excising the evil"
- especially after I saw how the German system works.
-
- There is at this time no charismatic leader, male or
female, to exploit the rampant disintegration. The German Titanic
is severely listing, taking on water - and these professional liars are
busy rearranging the chairs on the deck? There is a "let them
eat cake", Marie-Antoinette surreal feeling that has settled like
a Smoky Mountain ground fog over our fatherland. All those living here
and under the system know that we are seeing the end of the postwar era.
I believe that Helmut Schröder's inexplicable stepping back after
his loud claim to the chancellorship on election night, and also Joschka
Fisher's slinking quietly into the political wilderness, is so totally
atypical of those two men that, in my opinion, someone, some force from
somewhere, must have confronted them with arguments to go quietly - but
to go! You can be sure that the East Coast did not forgive those two men
for not joining in the rape of Iraq! For them it was, Game Over!
It was Iraq Payback Time! I am surprised they lasted as long as they did!
-
- It is clear that the old order of things is expiring.
I read here that the Republican majority - some 28 US senators in President
Bush's own party - refused to vote for an important piece of legislation,
about oil of all things! Oil is Cheney's and Bush's power base -
and his own party denied him a majority. That is a clear sign that
Bush is truly a lame duck president from now on, and things also concerning
9/11. There will be movement.
-
- How far? From within prison walls, it's hard to
be specific, but there is a new fluidity similar to what I felt, sensed
and saw before the East German and Soviet Union regimes of almost 70 years
collapsed, imploded silently, became history - gone in spite of atomic
rockets and submarines.
-
- Tonight they are supposed to have a TV Special Report
on the Zundel Case - shades of Canada 1985-2000! It is amazing to
me how all this developed. It sometimes is a bit as if life had placed
me in the eye of a hurricane where there reigns an eerie calm, while all
around me in a safe distance howling storms whip up gigantic waves in mountains
of greenish froth which scare untold millions out of their wits.
Twenty years ago a London Times writer asked: "What manner of
truth is this man Zundel in touch with to create such a furor?"
That's the one question I keep asking myself: What on earth is it,
exactly, that so unnerves these people? The incredible over-reaction!
You can be sure, Ingrid, that there is an equal mountain of evidence implicating
U.S. bureaucrats, US spy services and lobbyists [conspiring] to throw me
out of a country of almost 300 million people. For doing what, exactly?
Asking a five-word question - DID SIX MILLION REALLY DIE? One question?
30,000 words in that little essay written 31 years ago by a university
student? Think about the disturbance this caused!
-
- It is this more than strange energy vortex that fascinates
me, that convinces me that there is some force we do not yet understand,
that we are approaching or tapping into without even knowing or comprehending.
History can be very instructive. As you know, I have taken the long
view in all this, and I am not inclined to change my attitude. My
belief in an inscrutable but basic order in the cosmos has not changed.
I did not survive all these trials, tribulations, persecutions, the bombs
and the arson, for NO reason. You could say that with all the misfortune
which has befallen me - and, by extension, now you - I have been very fortunate.
And so will you be also!
-
- So, my hard-working wife, I am thinking of you, and looking
at your gentle, intelligent face - your bookmark does you justice. Ingrid,
I will keep the dream alive. It is not geography-bound.
|
