A candidate in this month’s provincial elections dropped out of the race Monday after his links to neo-Nazi propagandist Ernst Zundel were exposed by the Vancouver Sun.
John Ball, running on the slate of the governing Social Credit Party, admitted he was employed briefly as a consultant by Zundel, who denies the Holocaust ever occurred.
He said he had worked for him for three days in Washington examining aerial photographs of Auschwitz and other Nazi death camps, for which he was paid several thousand dollars.
Ball claimed it was just another job and that he did not agree with Zundel’s politics.
But later he admitted attending a meeting sponsored by the Canadian Free Speech League, an organization headed by Doug Christie, defense lawyer for suspected war criminals, neo-Nazis and Holocaust revisionists such as Zundel.
The expose won praise for Sun reporter Stewart Bell, who discovered that Ball and Zundel had appeared together on a Canadian Broadcasting Corp. television program in 1985.
But it further soured Jewish attitudes toward the Social Credit Party, which has given the Jewish community cause to be wary.
Ball’s name was found among the acknowledgements in a revisionist book titled “The Great Holocaust Trial.” He was credited with “playing an important role” at Zundel’s trial for disseminating hate propaganda.
Nevertheless, Social Credit Premier Rita Johnston, who is running for re-election, seemed less than enthusiastic about accepting Ball’s resignation.
‘NO BIG DEAL’
It is “no big deal,” she said on British Columbia Television. “This is an unfortunate incident that has been blown a wee bit out of proportion,” she said.
She accused the media of “trying to make a mountain out of a molehill.”
Johnston said she learned of Ball’s association with Zundel when the story broke Monday morning and promptly obtained his resignation.
But there is evidence she was well aware of the situation several days before.
Reporter Bell told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that Ball telephoned Campaign Manager Jess Ketchum the previous Friday night and offered to resign then.
Ketchum confirmed later that he and Patrick Kinsella, the campaign chairman, talked to Ball that Friday night, when Ball offered to quit “for the good of the party.”
The Social Credit Party apparently withheld his resignation until Monday, when it would see the story and decide if it was damaging.
A spokesman for the Canadian Jewish Congress-Pacific Region, Michael Elterman, said, “We were quite annoyed that the premier didn’t ask Ball to resign as soon as she heard about it, but instead waited to see what the media reaction was going to be before she accepted Ball’s resignation.”
But Elterman said he is relieved Ball is out of the race, “because there has been a trend in recent years to have extremist right-wing candidates enter legitimate mainstream politics.”
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
