David McCalden, long-time leader of Holocaust revisionists and cofounder of the Institute for Historical Review, has brought suit against the California Library Association (CLA), the Simon Wiesenthal Center, the American Jewish Committee and the City of Los Angeles, “alleging conspiracy to interfere with civil rights and breach of contract.”
The suit, filed last November by McCalden, who is also known as Lewis Brandon, and his “Truth Missions,” a front group for the propagation of Holocaust revisionism in Manhattan Beach, California, grows out of an incident in December 1984 when the 3,000-member CLA initially slated and then withdrew an invitation to McCalden and other well-known Holocaust deniers to speak at a state-wide convention on the topic of “The Holocaust and Free Speech.”
When the invitation first became known to the public, the Wiesenthal Center joined with the American Jewish Committee and numerous political and religious leaders in vigorously protesting the presentation. At that time, Rabbi Marvin Hier, dean of the Wiesenthal Center, who is also named as a plaintiff in the lawsuit, said, “Every time you give these Holocaust revisionists a microphone, they kill the victims of Hitler’s ‘Final Solution’ again.”
After receiving additional protests from the National Conference of Christians and Jews, the Urban League, and the L.A. City Council, CLA Executive Director Stefan Moses announced CLA’s decision to cancel the appearance.
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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.
