Revisionist Takes Stand in Defense of Zundel

A man who claims to have amassed evidence that the Holocaust never occurred was the first defense witness to take the stand in the retrial of neo-Nazi propagandist Ernst Zundel. Proceedings resumed in federal court here Thursday, after several weeks’ recess.

Ditlieb Felderer, an Austrian-born Swedish national, testified that he showed his evidence to Zundel, thereby giving the Canadian “reasonable grounds” to doubt the veracity of the Holocaust.

The defense is trying to prove that Zundel acted without malice because he had reason to believe there was no Holocaust.

Felderer showed the court scores of slides he said he made during visits to the sites of various death camps. They show him measuring basements, scaling walls, scraping paint from bricks and cutting samples of tree trunks.

He contended that his efforts proved there were no homicidal gas chambers. He claimed that the deadly Zyklon B gas was used exclusively for decontamination and fumigation to prevent typhus epidemics at the camps.

Felderer also claimed he saw swimming pools and sports stadiums at the camps. But then he accused the Communist authorities in Poland of camouflaging all of the camp sites.

At the outset of the trial, the court took juridical notice of the Holocaust, establishing it as a fact in the eyes of the court.

Zundel was convicted in 1985 of spreading false and malicious information, including denial of the Holocaust, calculated to incite racial and religious hatred. He was sentenced to 18 months in prison, but the Supreme Court overturned his conviction on technicalities and ordered a retrial.