For the second time in four months, a series of satellite-transmitted television programs denying the Holocaust and promoting racism and anti-Semitism has been taken off the air.
The shows, produced by Canadian Holocaust denier Ernst Zundel under the series title “Voice of Freedom,” were broadcast first during the summer by Showcase America, a Colorado-based company, and then during the fall by Keystone Communications, based in York, Pa.
The Simon Wiesenthal Center, based in Los Angeles, had protested the programs, which had the potential to reach millions of homes.
One of the shows featured Zundel on a walking tour of the Auschwitz concentration camp with another Holocaust denier, David Cole.
“That program was the most outrageous of all because it desecrated the memory of Hitler’s victims by using a gas chamber in the infamous camp as a backdrop for these hatemongers to deny that anyone was gassed at all,” said Rabbi Abraham Cooper, associate dean of the Wiesenthal Center.
“The use of this medium by Holocaust-deniers indicates a troubling growth in the sophistication of the methodology used to spread the ‘big lie,’ ” said Cooper.
In September, the “Voice of Freedom” was taken off the air in Canada after complaints were filed by the Canadian Jewish Congress.
Zundel has been moving his program from one satellite broadcaster to another, Cooper said.
“The good news about satellite transmissions is that it enables people to transmit information and programming over large distances,” he said.
“The bad news,” he added, “is that people like Zundel have learned to do the same thing.”
Zundel, 54, was originally convicted in Canada’s courts in February 1985 on charges of distributing a 32-page Holocaust-denial pamphlet, “Did Six Million Really Die?”
On Aug. 27, 1992, responding to Zundel’s challenge, Canada’s Supreme Court struck down as unconstitutional the law banning the wilful spread of “false news” that was used to convict him.
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.
