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SR Worldscope on Revisionism and Revisionists

By Bradley R. Smith, Richard A. Widmann ∙ April 1, 1997

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  • More on the last days of Thies Christophersen, who died in February (SR41). He died in a home for the elderly of kidney cancer at the age of 79, shortly following his release by German authorities, who had arrested him in January. The former agronomist and puncturer of what he named “the Auschwitz Lie” liked to tell his friends that he spent several days under arrest in the Third Reich for telling a Hitler joke; for attempting to right the historical balance on the Second World War, Christophersen spent the last decade of his life in exile.
  • The neo-German witchhunt goes on. In Heilbronn, Manfred Junger, 58 years old, was sentenced to six months imprisonment without probation last December for distributing pamphlets that challenged official Germany’s mandatory history of the Holocaust, above all the Auschwitz “gas chambers.” This is the second such conviction for Junger, an ordained Lutheran minister; leaflets distributed on his behalf in Germany prominently display the address of CODOH’s Web site. His address: Pastor Manfred Junger, D-7406, Bad Rappenau, Haller Ring 28, Germany.
  • After last month’s sorry news from Amnesty International (it justifies imprisoning revisionists—see SR41), a non-revisionist’s even tepid defense of the rights of Holocaust revisionists might seem welcome. But Britisher Geoffrey Wheatcroft’s line in response to European “Holocaust denial” laws: “…the answer to lies is not to imprison the liars but to tell the truth,” in his much-noticed new book The Controversy of Zion (Addison-Wesley, New York, 1996, p. 340) is noteworthy, sadly, not so much because intellectuals, even the professional free-speech fakes like AI, are publicly demanding the suppression of Holocaust revisionists—but because almost to a man the free-speech intellectuals “ignore” it.
  • Ernst Zuendel’s latest (March 15,1997—#216) newsletter, Power, offers a frank, informative, 20-page recap of his entire life, including his career as a publicist, activist and fighter for German honor and historical revisionism. This issue is a valuable review, update, and reference on the over twenty years of media vilification, physical assault, assassination attempts, fire bombings, silencings, arrests, trials, fines, jailings Zuendel has endured—and on the breakthroughs like the Leuchter Report, David Irving’s about-face on the gas chambers and the numerous other research and historical coups Zuendel has pulled off or inspired. As Ernst girds for yet another round of legal battles (attempts to close down his Website, to deport him to Germany, and to sue him on hollow charges), we encourage readers of SR to help this courageous, tenacious and good-souled man to the best of their ability.
    [A small contribution to Ernst Zuendel at Samisdat, 206 Carlton St., Toronto, Ontario, Canada M5A 2L1; and your request for Power #276 (March 15, 1997), will bring you a copy of this dynamic issue.]
  • David Irving’s latest volume, Nuremberg: The Last Battle has been published by Focal Point Publications. Irving's new book is based on a series of articles which were published in German as Nuernberg, die letzte Schlacht in 1979. Nuremberg is totally revised and brought up to date with the latest Revisionist discoveries.
    In a book which is sure to thrill Revisionists, Irving argues that crimes of the Nazi's were no greater than those committed by the Allies. Irving takes on the gas chamber story, the human soap story and the torture of the Nazi leadership in Allied captivity. After the relatively tame Goebbels, Irving has returned with a blockbuster. Irving calls the human soap story a “propaganda lie,” and the Auschwitz gas chamber “a fake.” The origin of the Six Million is traced back to 1919. The affidavit of Rudolf Hoess is also dealt a death blow. This is a volume that no Revisionist should be without. (Richard Widmann.)
    [Hardcover, 377 pages, illustrated, $39.95 plus $4.00 postage. Available from: Institute for Historical Review, P.O. Box 2739, Newport Beach, CA 92659, USA]
  • 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.

  • Richard A. Widmann

    Richard A. Widmann, together with David Thomas, created modern CODOH as we know it, when he talked Bradley Smith into creating what was then called CODOHWeb, CODOH's online presence in 1995/1996. In 1999, Richard Widmann was among the team that launched and ran the revisionist periodical The Revisionist, until it was taken over by Germar Rudolf in 2003. When this project collapsed in 2005 with Rudolf's arrest, deportation and 44-months imprisonment, Richard Widmann, after some hesitation, created a new revisionist periodical in 2009 called Inconvenient History, which he issued until 2017, when this project, too, was once more taken over by Germar Rudolf.

Bibliographic information about this document: Smith's Report, no. 42, April 1997, p. 5
Other contributors to this document: n/a
Editor’s comments: n/a

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