Zündel Headquarters Torched

The headquarters home of Ernst Zündel, the German-born Canadian resident who has for several years directed a world-wide revisionist campaign from Toronto, was severely damaged by fire after an unknown assailant doused the building with gasoline at five a.m. on May 7-8 and set it ablaze.

Mr. Zündel, who is best known for his publication of revisionist materials and his world-wide satellite TV broadcasts, was in Vancouver at the time of the attack.

The criminal attack destroyed the top floors of the house on Carlton Street in Toronto's Cabbagetown area as well as the next-door apartment building. The arsonist was captured on videotape by security cameras as he slopped twenty litres of gasoline over the outside of the building. The dramatic tape has been shown several times on Ontario television news bulletins; the man is likely to have been hired for the job.

The damage is extensive. The blazing roof crashed into the building. Fire brigade water flooded the lower floors, and all the electric wiring burnt out. The building next door was totally destroyed by the fire, making four people homeless. Three young people had rented an apartment next door a few days before the fire. They lost everything.

Witnesses saw a six foot man in a white hat with acid washed jeans, brown cowboy boots and a coloured sports jacket carrying a red gasoline canister to the front, “gingerly like a bomb,” and setting the blaze.

Four TV surveillance cameras ring the house. The tapes show a man in a brimmed canvas type hat pouring gasoline around the front porch. Bystanders were angry. “Violence begets violence” said Justin Gobel.

Ernst Zündel commented regarding the terrorist bombing, “Everything in this house stinks as the German cities stank after the war. I was then a first grader, but I will never forget that stench. Little did I know that fifty years later, one more German was going to be burned out by German enemies – and that it would be me this time!”

The Canadian Jewish Congress (CJC) spoke of “an unfortunate event.” “If we have grievances we go through the courts,” claimed CJC chairwoman Gerda Frieberg. Jewish organizations orchestrated a campaign of sarcastic letter writing to newspapers across the country, from readers saying that despite mountains of evidence that the fire happened, they did not believe it – an ironic comment on allegations that the Holocaust is exaggerated.

Journalist Rosie DiManno wrote a gloating column in the Toronto Sun on May 8. “Everything is just a bit queer,” she wrote, hinting that Zündel had himself set the blaze.

One journalist excelled: Christie Blatchford, writing in the Toronto Sun on May 9. She pointed out that history shows that only the “smug and virtuous” left has a record of resorting to terrorism, arson, and violence; the rightwing has never used thosed tactics.

Bernie Farber, speaking for the CJC, angrily disclaimed any Jewish involvement in the attack. On May 10 however, a New York based offshoot of the Jewish Defense League (JDL), calling itself the “Jewish Armed Resistance Movement,” confessed to the Sun newspaper to having set the blaze. The caller left an authentic unlisted telephone number of the Kahane Chai, an ultra-Zionist group.

Meir Halevi, Toronto leader for the League, denied any involvement, but on May 12, just five days after the blaze, Halevi and Irv Rubin, US national director of the JDL, were arrested by police and questioned when they tried to breach a protective barrier at the scene of the crime.

Adapted from: David Irving's Action Report #9b, June 10, 1995 and Power Letter, May 17, 1995. Also as reported in The Toronto Sun, May 8 and 9, 1995.