READERS RESPOND

Institute director defends his historical perspective

We are used to inaccurate writing about the Institute for Historical

Review, but Steve Marble’s front-page column sets some kind of record for

errors and misrepresentations (“Some pieces of history not worth

reviewing,” March 15). Before firing off his polemic, he didn’t even

check our Web site (www.ihr.org), much less contact us directly. He

doesn’t even get our address right in the first paragraph.

A 1989 review meeting was not forced out of the Red Lion Inn because

“hotel execs caught wind of what was up,” but in response to outrageous

threats and intimidation by the Jewish Defense League, a violent group

that the FBI has identified as a terrorist organization.

Far from being a promoter of “hate,” as Marble suggest, the institute

has itself been a victim of hate and bigotry. It has been the target of

repeated violent attacks, culminating in a devastating arson attack

against our office and warehouse on July 4, 1984.

The institute opposes bigotry of all kinds in its efforts to promote

greater public understanding of key chapters of history. Speakers at our

meeting and contributors to our Journal Of Historical Review have

included respected scholars from around the world. We are proud of the

backing we have received from people of the most diverse ethnic and

religious backgrounds, including Jewish.

Marble’s characterization of our legal dispute with Auschwitz survivor

Mel Mermelstein is one-sided. In fact, Mermelstein’s campaign against the

institute came to a dramatic end on Sept. 19, 1991 when his $11 million

lawsuit against the institute was dismissed in Los Angeles Superior

Court. Judge Steven Lachs granted the institute’s motion for dismissal of

his malicious prosecution complaint, and soon afterwords Mermelstein

himself dismissed his libel and conspiracy complaints. Mermelstein’s

appeal of the ruling was unanimously rejected by the California Court of

Appeal.

While it is quite true that many hundreds of thousands of Jews were

killed and otherwise perished during the World War II as a result of the

brutality anti-Jewish policies of Germany and its allies, it is also true

-- as revisionists scholars have carefully established -- that specific

Holocaust claims are untrue or exaggerated.

It is now authoritatively acknowledged, for instance, that the gas

chamber at Auschwitz that has been shown for decades to tourists in its

“original” state is actually a fraudulent postwar reconstruction.

Likewise, apparently persuasive evidence presented at the Nuremberg Trial

of 1945-46 “proving” that prisoners were gassed at the Dachau and

Buchenwald concentration camps is now universally recognized as

worthless.

If the revisionist view of the Holocaust were really as simplistic and

mistaken as Marble suggests, it would not have gained the support of

university professors such as Arthur Butz and Robert Faurisson,

historians such as Roger Garaudy, David Irving and Harry Elmer Barnes,

and former concentration camp inmates such as Paul Rassinier. These

individuals did not decide publicly to reject the orthodox Holocaust

story -- thereby risking public censure, and worse, because they are

fools, or because their motives are evil -- but rather on the basis of a

sincere and thoughtful evaluation of the evidence.

The headline that “some pieces of history don’t need reviewing,” is

dangerously mistaken. Especially a chapter of history as politicized and

polemicized as the Holocaust deserves close and critical review.

MARK WEBER

Director of the Institute for Historical Review

Editor’s note: Columnist Steve Marble stands by his story as being

fair and accurate.