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Auschwitz survivor blessed with growing family

By Bradley R. Smith ∙ March 1, 1995

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Leo Laufer is a survivor of Auschwitz/Birkenau who monitors the Dallas (Texas) press to insure that it gives survivors a square deal and that the Holocaust is never forgotten.

On 10 February 1977 a letter from Mr. Laufer ran in The Dallas Times-Herald (defunct) reporting that Laufer had spent almost two years at Birkenau where “I lost my entire family of two brothers, three sisters, my father and mother, and aunts and uncles.”

On 20 April a letter from Mr. Laufer ran in The Dallas Morning News reporting that while at Birkenau he had lost his “father, mother, three brothers, four sisters and not counting hundreds of family members.”

It must feel reassuring to understand that even in the land of the dead one's family can continue to multiply, which implies a kind of underground eroticism that few of us have had the privilege of experiencing.

(Thanks to B.A., Evanston IL)

Author

  • Bradley R. Smith

    Bradley R. Smith was born in Los Angeles on February 18, 1930. At 18 he joined the army and in 1951 served with the infantry in Korea where he was twice wounded. After three decades of a variety of professional activities, it suddenly hit him: In 1979 he read a leaflet by Professor Robert Faurisson, "The Problem of the Gas Chambers." Then, Arthur Butz’s The Hoax of the Twentieth Century did it for him. He understood from the beginning that he would address the censorship, the suppression of independent thought, the taboo against publishing and debating revisionist arguments—not the arguments themselves. That has remained his position. In 1989, Smith founded Committee for Open Debate on the Holocaust (CODOH) dedicated to defending free speech and free inquiry into the Holocaust question. He handed over CODOH's helm in late 2014. He passed away on his 86th birthday, February 18, 2016. Read a series of obituaries here.

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Bibliographic information about this document: Smith's Report, no. 21, March 1995, pp. 6-7.
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