Another David Cole Adventure In Europe

Most of you know that David Cole traveled with a camerawoman to Poland, Austria and Germany in the fall of 1992 to make a new, detailed film record of the physical evidence for the alleged gassing chambers. Many of you do not yet know that he returned to Europe in October this year [1994] to get additional materials. Both trips were sponsored by D&B Productions, a company he and I formed to produce and distribute revisionist videos, including his knockout interview with Dr. Piper at Auschwitz.

The Cole/Piper video became the most widely distributed revisionist video yet produced anywhere, and created an uproar from here to Europe and Israel. We hear that the library at Yad Vashem in Jerusalem shelves 10 copies of the video (knock-offs, I presume) and that there is always a waiting list to view it. While the first trip was a great success, the second was a catastrophe. Win one, lose one.

In October David returned to Europe with a second camerawoman to continue his investigations, the details of which are of such a unique nature that we do not yet want to reveal its specific purpose. This time, however, rather than coming back with an unexpected bonus, such as the once-in-a-lifetime live, video-taped interview with Dr. Piper, he came back with evidence of just how dangerous and problematic it can be for revisionists to carry out research at the alleged gas-chamber sites.

David had completed his work in Poland, Germany and Austria and was examining the Struthof (Natzweiler) “gas chamber” in the mountains outside Strasbourg. He had negotiated with the curator and director of the Struthof site for the right to enter the “gas chamber,” which normally is closed to visitors. It was arranged that he could tour the room only under the strict supervision of two camp guards.

Now we get to the rich part. David wasn't alone. He was traveling with Robert Faurisson's French publisher, Pierre Guillaume; with Henri Roques, author of The Gerstein Confessions, and Roques' wife, and with Tristan Mordrell, a French revisionist activist. All of them were inside the Struthof building which houses the “gas chamber” when one of the two guards assigned to supervise the visit excused himself, went out, and locked the exit door from the outside. David tells me that, when the door was locked, it made a loud noise but didn't think anything of it.

In any event, after about twenty minutes the second guard returned, unlocked the door and everybody went outside to return to their cars. Mr. and Mrs. Roques had traveled in their own car, Pierre Guillaume and Tristan Mordrell had arrived in Guillaume's car. David's car, which he had rented in Warsaw, was parked between the other two. Those three were the only cars in the isolated, mountain-top parking lot.

What David discovered was that a front door window in his car had been smashed and his travel journals, papers, books, personal effects, video tapes and still camera film had all been stolen. In short, all his research. He was cleaned out. Significantly, camera equipment which would have been the first priority of your normal thief because it could have been sold or pawned—that stuff was not taken. The other two cars, while containing items of value in plain view, including Mrs. Roques’ purse, were not touched.

The guards were not helpful. The guard who locked the Cole party inside the so-called gas chamber, while he claims he was never more than a few yards from where the three cars were parked, claimed at the same time he didn't see anything unusual.

The Strasbourg police were not helpful. An article written about the robbery by a reporter for a Strasbourg daily was killed at the last moment by his editors. The reporter didn't want to talk about it. David notes that in Europe, in Germany, Austria and France particularly, police raids and seizures against revisionists are allowed under law, are relatively commonplace, and perhaps set the tone for “vigilante” operations in this instance.

Shortly after David returned from this catastrophe, I went down to Los Angeles and got the story on video tape. It's a straightforward talking-head interview that lasts about 80 minutes. It gives the complete story of this ill-fated voyage, from Warsaw to Paris. The above is only an introduction.

On the bright side, David met with both Jean-Claude Pressac and the curator of Majdanek, Tomasz Kranz, and in the video he reports on some of the very interesting information he was given by them. The “surprising details” of these interviews will be in D&B's new video on the “physical evidence” of the alleged gassing chambers.

Well, I can't get away from it. Win one, lose one. This ill-fated excursion set me back $8,000. I don't know if you know, or if you can even imagine, how difficult it is for me to take that kind of loss, or the loss of confidence it can cause in the minds of those who financed the operation. I'm not going to commit suicide over this, but I sure wish a couple angels would come forth from the heavens and replenish the coffers here. We have a whole new year of opportunities before us.

Meanwhile, to get the ball rolling, we have the 80-minute talking-head video of David Cole explaining it all to us about his expedition to the fabled “gas chamber” sites of the Old World, and recounting in detail our theory based on facts of the at-the-time-astonishing but after-some-reflection-not-all-that-astonishing Struthof (and after) debacle.

A donation of $25 or more will cause this dramatic and really interesting 80-minute video to fly through the sky to your house.