German Publisher Raided

In a March 27 raid of the Grabert publishing firm in Tuebingen, Germany, criminal police seized all available copies of a new book of Holocaust revisionist scholarship. The banned work is a 400-page large-format anthology entitled Grundlagen zur Zeitgeschichte: Ein Handbuch über strittige Fragen des 20. Jahrhunderts (Foundations of Contemporary History: A handbook on controversial questions of the twentieth century).

It contains 17 carefully researched essays by leading revisionist scholars in Europe and North America, including John Ball, Friedrich Berg, Robert Faurisson, Carlo Mattogno, Germar Rudolf, Udo Walendy and Ingrid Weckert. Compiled by Ernst Gauss, this volume, which analyzes the most important elements of the holocaust story, was published late last year.

Criminal indictments are likely against the publisher, Wigbert Grabert, and at least one of the individual contributors. Police seized the books on the basis of a court order, issued without a court hearing, requested by the state prosecuting attorney's office in Tuebingen. More than 30,000 copies of Grundlagen reportedly had already been distributed before the March 27 raid.

In its court order request, the prosecuting attorney's office stated:

“The [book's] team of authors regards the systematic and planned killing of people of Jewish faith, which was carried out under National Socialist rule as the “Final Solution of the Jewish Question,” from a revisionist view, and comes to the conclusion that there was no deliberate annihilation of the Jews.”

The book is dangerous, the office claimed, because it “denies the National Socialist genocide of the Jews during the Third Reich in a way that could disturb the public peace,” because it “injures the honor of Jews” in Germany who had been persecuted during the Third Reich, and because it “denigrates the memory of Jews” who lost their lives as a result of Third Reich policies, “especially in concentration camps.”

Adapted from: The Journal of Historical Review Vol. 15, Number 3 May/June 1995 P.O. Box 2739, Newport Beach, CA 92659, USA. Subscriptions $40 per year (domestic).