Fragments

*** Each afternoon a few minutes before 5pm my wife and I drive downtown to our mail drop hoping to find, among other interesting material, substantial contributions to help with the work. Sometimes it’s there, sometimes not. I need to average about $100 a day, or $3,000 a month, just to keep the work above water. Today there was one contribution for $25. When I told my wife that total contributions for the day were $25 she said, in Spanish:

“You need to thank God for it. He’s the one who gave it to you.”

“He’s the one?”

“That’s right, Gordo.”

“Does that mean it was God who gave me the cancer?”

“Why shouldn’t God give you cancer?” she said. “Who do you think you are? He gives you everything. You are already past the years when you should die.”

“I see.”

“Who are you?” she said.

It was kind of comic. I didn’t say anything more. That’s the way she talks to me about the really big issues related to life and the world of the divine. I have a photograph of her as a child in a village in Nayarit. She’s standing in the dirt, no shoes. Ordinarily she has a terrific sense of humor, but the set of her jaw in that photograph from some sixty years ago predicts a strength of character that would come to rule her life as a Christian.

*** Joseph Campbell (The Power of Myth) was being interviewed on PBS by Bill Moyers when Campbell remarked that “History is a nightmare from which we are trying to awake.” Remarkable image.

I recall reading Campbell (and Jung) after Korea, in 1953 maybe, sitting at night at the kitchen table while mother and father sat in the living room watching Roller Derby, or Jackie Gleason or All in the Family. All in the Family was a pretty good show.

On another PBS program, a documentary where a U.S. naval ship is trying to interdict pirates off the Somali coast, a crew was preparing to board a suspect ship. The Americans were all young guys. As they went over the side of their own ship to get into a small boarding vessel, the young man directing them said:

“Okay now. Keep your heads on swivel.”

I’d never heard that expression. Cool.

*** The USHMM has a page on its Web site ( http://tinyurl.com/ 7tyo7ek ) devoted to a Timeline for key events in the evolution of Holocaust Denial, an activity “generally motivated by hatred of Jews.”

We are not told what other motivations there might be to question the H story. Like a felt necessity for free inquiry? There are 31 of these key personages and events listed in the Timeline, beginning with the Germans and their collaborators destroying evidence of mass graves in Poland, the Soviet Union, Serbia and Germany in 1942/43.

All the names you are familiar with are there, beginning with Willis Carto and on through the major figures of Robert Faurisson, Arthur Butz, Harry Elmer Barnes, Ernst Zündel, David McCalden, and some who are tangential to revisionism—Gerald L.K. Smith? And then there is Bradley Smith.

“1987: California-based Bradley Smith founds the Committee for Open Debate on the Holocaust. During the early 1990s, Smith's organization places full-page advertisements or editorial pieces in more than a dozen American college newspapers under the headline ‘The Holocaust Story: How Much Is False? The Case for Open Debate.’ Smith's campaign helps to blur the line between hatemongering and freedom of speech.”

I quote this item in the Timeline because of the final assertion: that arguing the case for open debate “helps to blur” the line between hate mongering and freedom of speech. Freedom of speech—a very difficult issue for these people to deal with, even the most educated among them.

But here is the entry that took me by surprise. Among the 31 persons and events listed in the USHMM Timeline covering the 70 years since 1942, the last, final event listed is this one.

“2010: Bradley Smith places his first online Holocaust denial advertisement, which appears on the website of the University of Wisconsin's Badger Herald in February. The Internet—because of its ease of access and dissemination, seeming anonymity, and perceived authority—is now the chief conduit of Holocaust denial.”

A seven-word announcement in a student newspaper. One of the 31 most significant revisionist events in the 70 years since 1942! Publication of the ad did cause a commotion, including a response from the director of the USHMM herself, the charming but misled Sara J. Bloomfield.

I believe I am doing something that badly needs to be done. To call out university faculty before the eyes of their students, to demonstrate to students how they are being held in bondage by their professors to a set of historical issues that are ruled by taboo rather than thought. .

But I didn’t expect the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum itself to publicly affirm the value of my work in such a striking manner.

Sara?

Thank you.

*** I find on Ynetnews.com that a Google search of the term "al-holocaust al-falastini" (The Palestinian holocaust) elicited 446,000 results, while a search of "al-holocaust al-yahudi" (the Jewish holocaust) elicited 496,000 results. At the same time the term "al-holocaust al-yahudia lmazoum" (the bogus Jewish holocaust) elicited 202,000 results. Holocaust revisionism. Getting the message out.

*** My wife has talked about having high blood pressure for some twenty years. She’s always taken care of it, like she takes care of everything. Because she never made a scene about it, because I never heard that a doctor had told her she was in trouble, I didn’t pay much attention. One night last week she was in the kitchen washing dishes when she said she had a pain in her chest. I had never heard her say that. Then she said she was having palpitations in her heart. I had never heard her say that either. I suggested we check her blood pressure.

We went in the bedroom, sat on the bed, hooked her up and did it. The numbers were 197 over 105.

She put her pajamas on, got into bed and closed her eyes. I just sat there. I had never seen such numbers. After a few minutes I said I thought the numbers were too high, that while it might be our machine, maybe it wasn’t, and that we ought to drive to the Red Cross in town and have the numbers worked up again. Turns out she was half thinking the same thing but it was after midnight now and she didn’t want to be a bother. We got dressed, got in the Jeep and drove to the Red Cross. Within a few minutes they had her numbers again. The numbers were 176 over 100.

The young doctor working that night, an unpleasant fellow, said that the 100 number was a turning point, anything higher increased the risk of heart attack or stroke at any moment, and advised us to allow him to put a capsule of something under her tongue to bring the pressure down within half an hour to two hours. We said go ahead. Half an hour later the numbers were 153 over 90. High but high-normal, with no immediate risk.

Since that night the diastolic number has reached 100 twice. She put a prescribed capsule under her tongue each time and the numbers dropped dramatically. Temporarily. So my wife has an authentic problem with high blood pressure. We have to stay on top of it. Life.

*** Received a note from the Mid-County Regional Library, Florida. The Subject was: “Flyers at the Mid-County Regional Library.

Dear Sir,

Please be advised that the library does not permit display of personal materials on the public kiosks or bulletin boards. We ask that you cease placement of your materials immediately. If you have any questions about library policies, please contact Evie Kennedy, Regional Librarian at 941-613-3190.

Judy Domzalski. Library Technician – Mid County Regional Library, Charlotte County Community Services Department Libraries and History

941.613.3181

[email protected]

Please note: Florida has a very broad public records law. Most written communications to or from officials regarding county business are public records available to the public and media upon request. Your e-mail communications may therefore be subject to public disclosure.

I replied to Ms. Domzalski that she would have to fill me in here as I had no knowledge of what she was referring to with regard to "your materials." In the event, Ms. Domzalski has not filled me in. Must have been a local revisionist activist.

*** On 30 April 2012 David Duke interviewed Germar Rudolf on Duke’s online radio talk show, which can be accessed by anyone with access to a computer (everybody?). One of our guys wrote an open letter to Germar expressing her concern that appearing with Duke will compromise Germar’s reputation as a scientist and historian. I understood her concern, but I have always said that since I say the same thing to everyone, I will talk to anyone, so I did not have a similar reaction. Nevertheless. . . Germar replied to his concerned admirer and sent it around to us. I thought it well done and asked permission to publish it here. Germar replied that he had already posted it on his blog with a brief introductory comment without mentioning the lady’s name. He gave me the URL to his blog which he calls: “Welcome to My World.” http://tinyurl.com/7ohnov8

“So it's all yours,” he said. “In case you find any more typos or awkward expressions, please let me know and I'll fix it.”

We then had this email exchange. I am quoted first.

“(Expletive deleted). I didn't even know you had a blog. Hernandez didn't know you have a blog. Where have we been? Who knows you have a blog?”

“I just started it,” Germar replied. “Don't panic!”

“When? It looks real good.”

“Well, you will see the first entry in March. Then the project stalled for four weeks, as I had other things to tend to. Finally I sat down and put stuff up when this latest little scandal broke out driving traffic to my empty site. I figured I need to hoist my flag, so I did.” Below is the letter that Germar wrote to a concerned revisionist and posted on his (new) blog. I think it addresses the issue well. The interview with Duke is here: http://tinyurl.com/76zxwbs

May 2, 2012

Yesterday I received an email by a person I do not know. It was a reaction to my having appeared on one of David Duke’s radio talk shows on April 30, 2012. He wrote, among other things: ”I am concerned that Germar Rudol[f]‘s image as a reputable and objective scientist will be irreparably damaged by his association with David Duke.” This is neither about me nor about David Duke. It is not even about reputation, as neither of us has any to lose, in the eyes of the public at large anyhow. It is about ostracizing others. We, as victims of such societal ills, should be very careful before we do this to others.

You criticize me for talking publicly with a person of alleged ill-repute. David will be criticized the same way for talking to me by some of his adherents who think revisionism unnecessarily encumbers his/their political struggle. So here we all go, diminishing the ranks of our potential listeners and supporters in order to allegedly look better – to whom? Those who denigrate us daily?

You – and everyone else for that matter – should not judge me by the persons I talk to, but by what I say to them. Keep in mind that I will talk to anyone, everyone, who wants to and does talk to me in a civilized manner. One of the things I have learned during my ordeal is that we should NEVER allow our persecutors to define who we are permitted to talk to. Allowing this to happen is like rubber-stamping their acts of persecution as valid, legitimate and appropriate.

And this is something I will never agree to.

Being free to speak with whom we damn well please to speak is a very important part of the very concept of free speech. It should also be a basic principle of human life: speak with and listen to each other rather than harm and kill each other. It would behoove our societal and political leaders well to listen to that advice. But most of them are deaf in that regard, I’m afraid.

Next week I’ll be interviewed by Carolyn Yeager. I hope that no one will freak out over that one, although I figure some may cringe. That’s life.

Best,

Germar

*** “The Power of the Moment”—a phrase I picked up the other night from Isaiah Berlin where he is writing about Tolstoy. The power of the moment! We live through a galaxy of moments, inconceivably, incomprehensively numerous, yet here and there, there is the moment when it happens. That’s how it was the moment I understood I would be a writer and again, 25 years later, the moment I understood it was not to be. There were other “moments” of course. I’m going to put something together about a number of them, and how they are related.

Anyhow?

Bradley