By Bradley R. Smith ∙ September 16, 2009
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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Bradley Smith’s life was a varied and colorful one. But he is best remembered for his courageous, steadfast battle of more than 30 years to promote public awareness of the Holocaust issue. In spite of privation, relentless smears and many setbacks, he persisted in this daunting struggle with exemplary dedication, calmly confident of ultimate victory…
What exactly did the NSDAP (National Socialist German Worker’s Party) represent and who were its founding members? Why and how did Adolf Hitler transform the party from an unimpressive proletariat workers’ party to a full-fledged political machine that obtained absolute power in Germany? Perhaps more important, how was it funded? We answer these questions in…
CODOH was born of the initiative of its founder, Bradley R. Smith to promote intellectual freedom with regard to the Holocaust question on what was then a much smaller scene of information sharing, just at the moment of explosion of what would become a revolution of information exchange: the digital era and its medium: Internet….
For some years now I have been writing a special cover letter to go with the December issue of this Report. Needing a little shove to get going I was searching for cover letters I wrote here for Christmas in 2004 and hopefully in 1994. Or there about. It could be interesting. As it turned…
There’s no chance I’ll get this right. To begin with, I keep getting stuck on the thought of Barney Rosset reading Henry Miller for the first time. That’s a bad start. I know just how it sounds. Next, I think of such times when I’ve been asked about my favorite writers and how easily I’ve…
Bradley R. Smith was born into a working-class family in South Central Los Angeles on February 18, 1930, where the family remained until 1970. He was a good student on occasion, but was more interested in horses than education. At 18, he joined the army, and in 1951 served in the 7th Cavalry in Korea,…
