A Note From the Editor

This issue, we are extremely pleased to welcome onto our Editorial Advisory Committee three very distinguished academics. Thomas Henry Irwin is a graduate of Western Kentucky University, and has taught at Ohio State University. He is now pursuing a law degree at University of Kentucky. Richard Verrall is a History graduate from University of London, and now edits the New Nation quarterly magazine (73 Great Eastern Street, London EC1) which has a special Revisionist feature each issue. Dr. Wilhelm Stäglich served his country at an anti-aircraft installation near Oswieçim (Auschwitz) in German-occupied Poland. After the war, he became a federal judge at Hamburg. However, due to his outspoken skepticism of the “Holocaust” notion — in particular regarding Auschwitz — he was retired early. He later had his pension reduced as a further inducement to remain silent. His recently published book Der Auschwitz Mythos (The Auschwitz Myth) has been confiscated by the West German authorities; stock, artwork and printing plates.

Our 1980 Revisionist Convention was held at Pomona College, Claremont, California, and was an even greater success than our first venture in 1979. 110 people attended, and heard speakers from all around the world debunk many Indisputable Historical Truths. A full report appeared in The Spotlight and the National Educator. The highlight of the Convention was the announcement of the results of the $50,000 reward for proof of the Holocaust. There had not been a single claimant, so henceforth the reward would be divided into two. We will award $25,000 to anyone who can prove the The Diary of Anne Frank is authentic, and $25,000 to anyone who can prove — by forensic means preferably – that the Germans turned Jews into bars of soap. Claim forms are available from this office, though it is unfortunate that Otto Frank died before we could sen , d him one. The papers which were presented at the 1980 Convention will be appear ing in the next two issues of THE JOURNAL OF HISTORICAL REVIEW. The 1981 Convention is provisionally scheduled for 20-23 November.

I am sorry to announce that the planned European Revisionist Tour for next summer has had to be indefinitely postponed, due to insufficient bookings. I would advise all those anxious to visit Poland to contact: Ditlieb Felderer, Marknadsvagen 289, S-183 34 Täby, Sweden. Mr. Felderer organizes minibus tours every summer where the itinerary is more flexible.

I note from my September issue of Response, the publication of the Los Angeles based Simon Wiesenthal Center for Holocaust Studies, that staff changes are under way. Efraim Zuroff, the Director, is to return to Israel were he will work for .the U.S. Government's War Crimes Investigation office. However, it is unlikely that he will be investigating such Holocaust luminaries as Simon Wiesenthal, who was a collaborator with the Nazis, according to the Austrian (Jewish) Chancellor Bruno Kreisky. His place is to be taken in Los Angeles by Alex Grohman, who has been studying at the Yad Vashem Center and the Hebrew University in Israel. With such heavy traffic back and forth between Israel and southern California, one wonders how long it will be before the airlines start a shuttle service! Local readers will of course recall the run-in I had on the air with Mr. Zuroff on a radio program earlier this year. Zuroff was also the most strident Zionist to call for the dismissal of Dr. Reinhard Buchner from the faculty of California State University, for the “crime” of disagreeing with the Zionist analysis of WW 11 history. In the latest issue of Response, Zuroff describes our JOURNAL as “slick-looking” and containing articles by “academicians.” (Could he be mixing up “academics” with the Soviet jargon?)

I note from a feature in the Wall Street Journal of 31 July 1980 that the LA center is financed entirely by the Belzberg brothers of Vancouver, Canada. Starting with a used furniture store in Calgary, the three brothers — Samuel, William and Hyman — now have holdings throughout North America valued at $500 million (personal) and $3 billion (corporate). The article reports: “The family fortune is one of the best kept secrets in Canada.”

Naturally, the Belzbergs like to keep control of their stockholdings, and the Wiesenthal Center is no exception. Samuel is Chairman of the Board of Trustees; William is also on the Board; and a Leslie (son?) is on the full-time staff of eleven -just to make sure that things are run in the family style (“shy but shrewd” according to the business paper). The three brothers and their wives are also “Wiesenthal Fellows,” along with other such upright pillars of society as Frank Sinatra. The Belzbergs also have enough cash left over from this philanthropy to finance the Dystonia Medical Foundation, also in Los Angeles. Dystonia is a rare neurological disease which afflicts only Jews. (Samuel Belzberg's eldest daughter is a victim.)

Los Angeles is of course fortunate in having not one but two Holocaust Museums, within a mile or two of each other. One is in the aforementioned Wiesenthal Center, and the other is on the sixth floor of the Anti-Defamation League building. Could it perhaps be that there is some rivalry in the Exterminationist camp, which prevents presenting a broad front?

The ADL — an illegal organization because it represents Israel and yet is not registered as a foreign agent à la Billy Carter — has been up to its usual tactics in policing American thought. They too wrote to California State University to demand action against our Dr. Buchner, but they were not so clumsy as Zuroff in demanding Buchner's dismissal. They merely wanted him “censured.” The university refused to do any such thing.

However, The ADL were more successful with smaller fry. They were able to pressure the San Diego Opera Association into dropping its proposed visit to Oberammergau, despite the opera buffs' original kiting of the Passion Play as “one of the most internationally celebrated events in the world.” After “representations” from the ADL, the President of the Association suddenly announced that he had not been “aware of the anti-Semitic content of the play,” and that the stopover would be cancelled. One wonders how a man can get to be President of an opera association without knowing the content of the various productions! I wonder if any Italian groups have been upset because the play depicts the Romans as being responsible for the Crucifixion also?

Another edict from the ADL to the federal government was immediately put into effect.to stop U.S. army bases in West. Germany from organizing visits to the play. One wonders how long it will be before the ADL insists that the New Testament is revised, on account of its content. The Passion Play is based on the Christian gospels.

The ADLers were also involved in demanding that the Organization of American Historians apologize for renting us their mailing-list, which they meekly did in their July Newsletter. At the Fall meeting of the OAH Executive, the secretary Prof. Richard S. Kirkendall reported that he was already feverishly at work with a rebuttal of THE JOURNAL OF HISTORICAL REVIEW, Volume One, Number One, and he would present his critique to the Board and in the Newsletter. Kirkendall's appraisal would be developed “by qualified historians, focus on the credentials of the contributors, and the use of evidence.” One can only speculate as to the background of the “qualified historians” on Kirkendall's team. We can be sure of one thing at least: the historians will have been “qualified” by the ADL before pen is put to paper.

Readers may like to know that a critique of the first issue of THE JOURNAL OF HISTORICAL REVIEW, has already appeared in The Jewish News of New Jersey, dated 4 September, 1980. The author is Rabbi Wallace Greene, who holds a Ph.D. in Jewish History from Yeshiva University, New York. The “rejoinder” goes on for six pages.

It is not thought likely that the ADL will be joining in on our postcard campaign for freedom of speech in West Germany. We were so impressed with the ADL/Wiesenthal Center postcard campaign to have the German Statute of Limitations extended that we decided to publish our own postcards. They are addressed to Chancellor Schmidt and politely but firmly request that West Germany stop seizing Revisionist books in that country, otherwise the Chancellor would be “called to the bar of world opinion to account for this” suppression of free speech. Samples are available free from this office; further supplies cost $10 per 100 cards. The ADL is much too busy presenting its hilarious “Freedom of Press Award” to the porn king Hugh Hefner. (The award was followed by considerable complaints in the Jewish community. See San Diego Jewish Press Heritage 5 September 1980.) We can all be further assured of the ADL's commitment to democratic values by the recent appointment to the Los Angeles Police Commission of Max Greenberg, National Chairman of the ADL.

The broadcasting of the CBS dirge Playing for Time on 30 September proved to be the non-event of the year. A sloppy script, caricature characters, wooden acting, and a funeralspeed plot, combined to consign this 3-hour soporific monotony to the literary gas-ovens. When the dust settled, one cannot help wondering whether the producers did not deliberately pick Vanessa Redgrave as the leading lady in order to stir up controversy and draw attention to an otherwise tenthrate product. About the only good that came out of this cinematographic semolina was that it showed the Zionists and Exterminationists in their true light. Demanding that Ms. Redgrave be fired for thought crimes, and publishing a list of advertisers in Peking — Gang-of-Four — style, can only draw the public's attention to the tyrannical nature of their rule over American life. As Alfred Lilienthal once said, there truly is a Zionist iron curtain over America.

This issue, we are especialy proud to publish the work of Howard F. Stein, an Associate Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Oklahoma. I first came across his work in The Journal of Psychohistory ($18pa; 2315 Broadway, New York, NY 10024), whose Fall 1978 issue was devoted to various articles on “Judaism as a Group Fantasy.” Dr. Stein is himself of Jewish origin, and believes that 40 of his relatives died in Europe during World War Two. His focus is not so much on history as on meanings. He feels that it is wrong to label the Holocaust a “hoax” or “lie” because the people who are propagating it actually believe in it themselves. It is this phenomenon of self-deception which he addresses in his very fine article. As always, reader response to your editor is very much encouraged.

LEWIS BRANDON
Director: Institute for Historical Review
Editor: THE JOURNAL OF HISTORICAL REVIEW